Break It Apart Project

Overview:

During this short project, the object that I chose was a HAM radio. The radio is a tri-band radio manufactured by the company TYT. Before I started to open up the radio, I sketched the whole outside and its components visible from the outside of the radio. I then unscrewed the 4 screws on the back plate underneath the removable battery and also unscrewed the 3 threaded holders from the top that holds the antenna and dials on the top in place. Once all those were removed, the back plate with a circuit board underneath was revealed, and another circuit board that controlled the LCD screen on the front of the device. The circuit board on the back plate controls and interprets the frequencies from the outside world to broadcast them through the speaker on the radio. Unfortunately, this was as far as I got during the project because of time constraints and also I could not get the circuit boards removed due to them being soldered into place. The sketches below describe the radio and its functions as far as I was able to get. The external view drawings are seen in the picture on the right and the more internal view of the circuit boards and internal workings of the radio are seen on the right. 

Reflection: 

Over the course of this project I learned a lot about how HAM radios operate. One thing that went well during this project was the disassembling of the radio itself; the radio was very simple to open with only 4 screws, but the tricky part was the screws on top of the dials. Another peak of this project was sketching all of the parts externally and then internally, I feel that my sketches accurately represent what parts go where on the radio. A point that I could improve on is my labeling of the sketches and making them more technical by adding measurements of side lengths and accurately portray the dimensions by using a scale with the graph paper (ex: 1 box= 1cm). Another thing to improve on for the next project would be the descriptions of the parts and go more in depth on how they operate and what their functions are. If I had more time to research more about the external materials, all of the internal components of the radio, and what chips do what function on the circuit boards then the radio would be easier to replicate from these blueprints. Overall, I feel this project has been a good introduction into the engineering class and makes us excited for what's to come.