Teardown: Camcorder

Created
04/23/06

Cause of Death
I didn't even test it
Source/Cost
Thrift store/$2.00
Parts Recovered
-DC brushless motor
-Stepper motor
-Gearhead DC motors
-Worm-gear DC motor
-Iris module
-CCD imager
-Misc. optics
-Tiny CRT display
-Piezo speaker
-Motorized lens assembly
-Plastic gears
-Molded inductors
-High voltage power supply
-DC barrel jack
-SIP trimpots
-Quite a lot of screws

This is an RCA Camcorder VHS video recorder that I picked up for $2 at a Goodwill thrift store. It proved to be an absolute bonanza of parts, particularly components of value to hobby roboticists. Some I kept, some I gave to friends, and some I sold on eBay. Amusingly, these sold for a total of $14 not including shipping, for a profit of $12.

The camera in various stages of overall disassembly:

Tape Mechanism

Tape mechanism and support board, and opposite side of mechanism with board removed.

Belt motor, tapedrive motor, small DC wormgear motor.

Gears!

Read/write heads.

Mainboard

Main PCB. Miniature daughterboards on SIP headers which I removed from the mainboard, which are probably useless to me. Proof that surface mount technology was very much in force in 1989.

Imager and Lens Assembly

This is what the lens assembly looked like before I removed the imager and tore it all apart.

CCD imager and its feed lens.

Iris module. This is seriously one of the most incredibly awesome things I have ever seen in my whole life. It is an electrically actuated iris mechanism that mounted to the rear of the lens assembly. When removed it is entirely self-contained and amazingly thin. I gave it to a professor at school to play with in his optics lab.

Binocular lenses - one lens was used to route ambient light to a level detector, and the other... I'm not sure. Gearhead motors - these operated on the focus and zoom rings of the forward lens assembly, which I left intact, but of which I have no photos.

This board holds the support electronics for the lens assembly and the imager. New to me were the two SIP trimpot networks - I had no idea anyone made these things, but now that I've seen them, they seem very obvious and very useful, and I want to find a source for more of them!

Viewfinder

The viewfinder was my main motivation for purchasing the camcorder. Prior to the advent of cheap and reliable LCD screens, viewfinders used miniature CRT displays. This was what I was originally after. It can be seen in the top of the center photo. Below it are the high-voltage power supply and support electronics. In the rightmost photo are the lens and mirror I extracted from the viewfinder housing.

It was exciting to find an X-ray radiation hazard warning sticker in a piece of consumer electronics! The white rectangle is the display end of the CRT.