Tripp-Lite HTR05-1U UPS Teardown

[@stonent]

Perhaps the heatsinks near the shrink wrapped caps are "live" and the heat shrink tube is to prevent the can of the capacitor from shorting against it. I've seen live heatsinks before in UPS devices.

[@PeterBrockie]

That sounds like the most likely explanation.

[@KS1776]

stonent I got bit by one of those one time and when I put my tester on it, it read 160v

[@miksu103]

I think on line ups usually means that it is continuously doing the AC - DC - AC conversion. That way it will be able to protect from spikes and noise, and if the power cuts out there is no delay before the ups starts. They also do phase correction and frequency adjustment. Not sure if this ups has all of that capability though.

[@mrfrog8502]

10:10 There's logic behind it. First of all they are mass produced and cheap and if one of them blows it pretty much means there's something seriously wrong so it needs to be serviced, therefore it's not a user serviceable part. This big transformer you mentioned it actually a center tapped inductor. They way those slim 1U UPS's regulate line voltage is not smooth. If the input line voltage is grossly under the threshold it add up say +20V or subtracts 20V if line input is over voltage. The only true output regulation occurs when this UPS is running from the battery.

[@DoRC]

Weird heatsinks. I don't think I've ever seen solid chunks of aluminum like that. I guess they are more relying on thermal mass than actual cooling. Might make sense given the low duty cycle...

[@PeterBrockie]

Not only are they weirdly shaped, but they aren't even attached to anything so they just bang around and snap off transistors without the silicone goop. :D

[@miksu103]

They sure have cheaped out on the manufacturing. Did you notice how one of the power supply taps had paralleled rectifier diodes and the pcb had still darkened. How about using a proper rectifier bridge with cooling?

[@PeterBrockie]

Yeah, it seems to be marketed as a server unit (rackmount, remote management, etc.) but it's pretty low end. The non-standard batteries are the real killer for it - they cost way more than the standard 12v units making it not really worth it considering how cheap an equivalent unit is using normal ones.

[@dfraser]

EPO is probably Emergency Power Off connector. For your big red button.

[@root4669]

wow, that thing looks really low quality.