Peering into the Black Box, Revisited

4 responses to “Peering into the Black Box, Revisited”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 19, 2018 at 11:42 pm

   Hint for the one above: It’s "an incredibly complicated piece of engineering. Of the hundreds of consumer products I’ve taken apart over the years, this is easily among the top 5% on the complexity scale." and "I would venture to say a majority of the bill of materials is devoted to machined parts, which is highly unusual for a mass-market consumer product." An example: "let’s zoom in on the locking mechanism that keeps the door closed. It includes:
   Large aluminum frame that provides the core structure
   10 custom injection molded parts
   1 solenoid to keep the door latched but not structurally closed
   Motor and controller board
   2 stamped steel parts
   1 coil spring
   2 custom dowel pins
   4 bushings
   1 gear
   Various screws, cables, connectors, glue, etc
   All this just to keep the door closed." — from the teardown analysis (link below).

   Onto #2
   amazing engineering and manufacturing details: "every detail about the implementation of the product signals a company spearheading a new product category and a business model that doesn’t depend on profitably selling consumer electronics hardware." For example, "Pulling off the sleek speaker grille, there’s a shocking secret here: This is an extruded plastic tube with a secondary rotational drilling operation. In my many years of tearing apart consumer electronics products, I’ve never seen a high-volume plastic part with this kind of process. After some quick math on the production timelines, my guess is there’s a multi-headed drill and a rotational axis to create all those holes." from teardown analysis, link below.

   #3 #4#5Hint: it has 6 microphones, and "lots of heat is being generated by the microprocessors and flash. We see:
   Freescale NXP SoM SC667517EYM10AE
   Cypress NAND Flash 8Gb S34ML08G101TFI000
   Micron DDR3 Memory 4Gb (2x) MT41K256M16TW-107-P
   If you are familiar with consumer electronics, you’ll note these are some sophisticated — and expensive — parts" — from the teardown analysis (link below)

   #6#7#8

   Reply
2. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 19, 2018 at 11:49 pm

   #1 Juicero Press: teardown analysis.
   #2 Amazon Echo Plus: see the bottom half of this teardown analysis.
   #3 Nest Protect (fire detector)
   #4 Dyson Hand Vacuum
   #5 Sonos One: teardown analysis.
   #6 Nintendo 64 Controller
   #7 Philips Norelco Razor (what I use at home)
   #8 Jawbone Jambox (literally a black box)

   P.S. for #3, the Nest fire detector, my buddy Erik was hoping to test a pre-release engineering prototype of this at the launch site of his Nest Rocket…. and then…

   Reply
3. 

   scleroplex

   Sep 20, 2018 at 3:10 am

   Would Nicholas Hayek have managed to reduce the sheer number of parts?

   Reply
4. 

   risknc

   Sep 20, 2018 at 3:18 am

   Back when I briefly worked in consumer electronics I tore down that same nest smoke/fire detector the day it came out and was floored by just how much they packed in on the mechanical design. They clearly weren’t just concerned with the external appearance. The button flexure and lighting is very nice from what I remember. Interesting how much design detail variance there is between similar consumer products. This is a great photo set 😀

   Reply