Cable Ferrite Beads

USB Ferrite Cable
Snap on Ferrite Core
Snap on Ferrite Core

Most of you would have seen these thick cylindrical parts embedded in USB/Power/HDMI cables around your home, right next to the ports. These are ferrite cores. Basically made of a ferrite material and consists of 2 halves clamping together around a cable. It forms an inductor and is used to suppress high-frequency noise in a cable. You will mostly find it in good-quality branded cables. This becomes important in consumer electronic cables to prevent radiated emissions, to and from the devices it connects.

There are snap-on cores of different dimensions(Hence different impedance to the high-frequency signals). These become very useful for EMI engineers to suppress cable noise and pass the electronic certification. You try on different snap-on cores(sometimes looping the cable inside the core a couple of times) and whichever helps you pass the test goes in the final product(Just the ferrite core part gets embedded in the cable). Saves you a ton of time(and money) while testing in the EMI test labs.

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Fan Regulator Teardown

Fan Regulator Teardown
Fan Regulator Teardown

Fan regulators are connected in series with the fan. All it provides is an impedance to the fan motor. There are multiple variations of these, the one shown is a rotary discrete level type. In these, there are usually 6 rotatable positions for the knob(incl. OFF). At each position, there is a metalised film capacitor which provides impedance in series. For lower positions, lower capacitance kicks in, meaning higher impedance (Capacitance and Impedance have inverse relation) to AC. There are 3 capacitors (1uF, 2.2uF, 3.2uF usually) for 3 positions, for the fourth position they put 2 of these in parallel to get a higher capacitance and an even lower impedance. At position 5, its direct connection to the motor for no impedance and full motor speed.

Usually, the fault in these devices is that the higher capacitors blow up(Fan won’t work on higher speeds) Or get shorted, so your fan will run at lower speeds but when you switch to level 3 or higher, the fan always runs in high speed irrespective of the position. You just need to buy a rated capacitor(INR 10, $0.1) and solder it to the board to fix the problem.

It’s not that these regulators are expensive to replace, like in my case, I can’t find the same model of regulators in the shop anymore and it will ruin the aesthetics of the rest of the switches on the board, to have a weird design regulator sitting there.

Fan Regulator Teardown
Fan Regulator Teardown
Fan Regulator Teardown
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