Hi. This is a follow-up video to my previous one where I tore down a Atl Philips ultrasound machine and that was a pretty epic uh video. almost 50 minutes long. So I'll link that in at the end down below if you haven't seen it.

But I promised that I would, uh, take a look at one of these ultrasound probes and well, let's try and tear this thing apart to, uh, see what makes one of these a tick? Now this is the Uh. This is a curved array you can get actually. The ultrasound that we looked at machine had uh, three different connectors on there, so you can permanently connect up to three different ultrasound probes to that particular machine so that then you could switch them in software. depending you didn't have to.

you know, connect and unconnect the actual Uh sensors like this. And by the way, the actual connectors are absolutely gorgeous. Look at that. Oh, it's just a thing of beauty joy.

forever. anyway. Um, yeah. really robust.

Uh, kind of, you know, industrial uh type connector that just latches, uh, that in place there? Oh beautiful. Anyway, this is one of the probes compatible with the Hdi 3000 ultrasound and it's the C52 curved array. Uh, this is Phillips brand because Phillips bought out Atl in the mid 90s. Now this is the C5240r.

Philips currently sell a C52 ultrasound probe that looks very similar to this. This is actually a curved array. that's why they call it a curved array because it's actually curved like that. And they do sell the exact, basically the same model as this.

but it doesn't have this connector it comes with like a Usb connector on it that plugs into like a newfangled, uh, tablet type device. Not sure if it's customized or whatever so that you know you can use them in the back of ambulances in the field, wherever. Um, you know you can. Just you don't need to haul around this big 200 kilogram ultrasound machine.

You can just plug in this little battery powered tablet thing, hook it up to one of these uh curved array probes, and you can diagnose people on the spot. Now this particular curved array here. the C5 Ii. It operates from Uh two megahertz to five megahertz range and it's got a 67 degree field of view.

It can, uh, well. the new one. I got the spec that it can penetrate up to 30 centimeters depth. and uh, this particular type of probe is actually used for uh, abdominal diagnosis.

So you know abdominal injuries, uh, gall bladders and lung injuries and you know things like that. So if you're in the back of an ambulance and they want to, you know, think you've got an abdominal injury or something's wrong with your lungs or something like that, they might, uh, you know, whack some of the uh ultrasound gel on this and uh program with one of those uh, tablity uh things. Or they might have it in the emergency department or something like that. They can just check you out while you're lying around.

They don't have to haul around a big machine. It also, uh, can be used for obstetrics, uh, stuff as well, I believe. So anyway, um, this looks like a sealed unit. Might have to get the dremel out for that, but this puppy has some screws, so I'm not sure if there's any active circuitry in here or whether or not it's just a connector.

Anyway, tear down time, All right. Let's crack this open. Got the screws out and oh, oh yeah, look at that. Wow.

um, a whole bunch of inductors right off the bat. So that would be just for, uh, like, Emc type reasons, wouldn't it? But anyway, the cable's going to be heavily shielded because as you saw in the ultrasound machine, uh, tear down like it's real. They really take their shield in seriously because these are medical devices. They don't want them to interfere with other stuff, so have a look at the braid in there and that's just that's tied down right to the metal case.

This is all metal, none of that plastic rubbish. and that looks like a large ferrite. yep, or multiple ferrites there with some sort of tape around it. So they've got a ferrite bead on there and looks like every single channel of this thing.

So count those and you might be able to, uh, see how many uh channels and this thing's got. Because yeah, if they're going to have multiple channels, uh, spread across here, they're going to have lots of ultrasound elements right across there like that. I don't know if they have like staggered rows or anything like that might see that when we tear it down. I hope this thing's not like completely potted, because if it is, ah, that'll be a real bummer.

But and now it looks like we've got another board down there. So actually, oh, there you go. Double that number of channels. So yeah, uh, that's just that's that's crazy.

Or they might had not. and they might have like, uh, two per uh, transducer? That would be my guess. but it looks like this looks like there's no other active circuitry on there. It's just it's just a physical connection.

But and there we go. We can fizz. Oh look at that. I can physically take that apart.

Oh, that's just that is so satisfying. It's just gorgeous. That is terrific. Anyway, that's a Pcb mountain connector on the front there.

Absolutely terrific. Um, those aren't spring loaded if those play along at home. Yeah, Pcb mount. and then the board to board interconnect.

Wow. Anyway, we've got a large that they all, uh, pass through. a large ferrite here. So yeah, every single individual uh wire going to a transducer contains an inductor.

I don't think there's any. There's no surface mount caps on there, but anyway, we can see they've got a tab bonded connection down to the bottom of the board There for individual wires. That's really quite remarkable, isn't it? Yeah, how do they do that? Because it's not like they're bonded together as like a ribbon? Um, these are. They're all individual wired.

That's that's. really fascinating. Let me get that tape off. Doesn't like me taking that off.

Um, anyway, this is a destructive tear down. anyway. so bugger it. So there you go.

That's how that works. Some sort of yeah, metal bar on the base of that. But each wire is is individually, uh, sold it individually. Like a you know, real reflow slasher hot bar attached down in there.

So yeah, that's interesting. So yeah, how exactly they bundle those uh together and put that tab connection on there to be done As a hot bar? that'd be? That'd be my guess. That's what it looks like it's done. But yeah.

fascinating. Now we've just got a couple of extra connections going off there to a lead. and that's about all she wrote. Everything else is just really a direct interconnect.

So yeah, they're very serious about their shielding. And of course, you have to be because we're talking. Although we're not talking like really high frequencies, only talking about sub five megahertz. Here, you've got to understand that these are powered ultrasonic transducers.

So these things operate. Um, I showed a data sheet in the previous uh video like a typical ultrasound. uh, multi-channel driver chip and we're talking like 50 volts at up to 2 amps driving capability. Then when you multiply that by lots of channels and huge big antenna cables coming off here.

Yeah, and yep, you guessed it all. this is going to be metal inside as well, that's going to be shielded. So if you cut that open, you can start to see the metal thread in there so it looks like they've got it'll be all metal casing. Uh, as you'd expect Because why why go to all the uh, trouble of like shielding all that and then just um, don't do anything on the final leg inside here.

And they've really done that strain relief brilliantly. Because yeah, like this is top quality. like they're not going to penny pinch. This could be a bit messy.

and yes, this is an oscilloscope front cover. Well the good news is it's not potted. You can see lots of copper shielding tape in there so it's actually not. Doesn't look like a metal case that was just a a metal outer.

uh like a metal. uh, strain relief ring. Yeah, it's gonna. I can break this apart.

Hey there we go. Look at that. Yep, handmade jobby. Each one of them.

Oh there we go. That's the thermistor. sorry I got my mask on. It's uh yeah.

let me clean this up. So there you have it, that's inside the head. and as we uh saw in the previous uh, teardown video of the ultrasound machine, it does temperature sensing in the head so the software can detect that. uh, that it's You know it's getting too hot.

it's putting too much power into it. It's a safety, uh, mechanism. So that was a well, that was a thermocouple. That's now a broken thermocouple I guess.

Anyway, you can see that the braid is connected to the top side there, and also down to the bottom side there. So, but yeah, look at that copper shielding tape there. They're really serious there. Um, why they didn't do it as like a metal um case.

Maybe it was, you know, too heavy or something. I I don't know what the deal is there. Um, or the copper tape was just better and cheaper and simpler. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm not sure if there's anything on that Pcb. I think it's just, uh, termination. but uh, let's get this tape off. It's just it's soldered down so I'm not gonna bother to desolder that.

Just gonna peel it off because it's very thin copper. It just breaks very easily. There you go. Yeah, I don't see any circuitry on there.

Yeah, all I see is a bunch of wires looping back. so that's just for termination reasons and just a Pcb. I can see stitching around the Via stitching around the outside of the Pcb like that. So it's going to be one big ground plane.

so I believe they're like they're going to terminate the Uh connections in here. They'll probably run as like, you know, not necessarily controlled impedance, but just like shielded. Um, by the top and bottom ground plane would be my guess. And then for good measure.

of course they put the copper tape on top. But of course, you have all this wiring exposed. Uh, you have to terminate that somehow. You've got to like fold it inside so the whole thing has to be uh, double shielded.

And here you have it. the rubber just comes off. I'm so glad that this wasn't entirely potted and you can see the array there if you zoom in and fork. Well, if you look at this in 4k, you'll be able to see that they're vertical elements.

You'll be able to count them. Go on there, try to get a nice deep field of view on that so everything's in focus. And yeah, good luck trying to count. There you go.

Here's a closer look. let's have a zoom in on that. You can see the flat flex on top, all the individual wires coming through and actually making contact with a thin vertical slice of, presumably like some sort of, uh, piezo ceramic transducer element. So I don't know if they'd have like one uh, transmit and one receive next to it.

I'm not sure the actual architecture of that, or whether or not they use the same element transmit and then actually receive somehow on the same element. Not sure what the deal is, but that's neat huh? And it looks like they're all joined together there. but that's actually the top copper shield in tape, which I haven't taken off yet. So you can see all the individual traces buggering off on the copper shielding tape.

But as you can see all the top traces there all going to one side of the one contact side of the element and all the ones on the other side would be going to the other side. But hang on. if you have a look at this side of it, you can see that all the elements are actually common. They do actually go to the one huge copper uh, pour on the flat flex there, so one side of the element is all grounded and then the other side.

That's where they actually get that from. So there's one. There is one huge common attachment to all, presumably like 128 elements or whatever. So interestingly, there are no gaps between the elements.

They're like all uh, sandwiched together, so that's interesting. Not sure the uh, the Uh beam form in physics of all this, but yeah, I'm sure someone in the comments will know now. It's not particularly easy to find. uh, good material on this, but I found this one multiple element, uh, transducers and the construction and the electronic scanning techniques.

and look, we've got uh, linear arrays here. We've got curved arrays, got circular arrays and how they're constructed, and it looks like they might actually fire these in like separate, like groups of elements and continually fire them and scan them across in linear arrays. Although there's multiple techniques for doing this, there's individual phasing as we'll see in a second, but voltage pulses are applied simultaneously. All elements in the group first elements through one, then as a group and they scan across.

That's for a linear array, and that's but. you're uh, familiar with your more traditional ultrasound being like a a tapered array like that. And sure enough, uh, if you use your curved array, that's what it does. Uh, you know, it gives you that pattern like that and that's what you're looking at.

There it is. So if you ever see a screen like that, you know that they're using a curved element array like that. And once again, this is like a five megahertz one. So this is bang on to what we're uh, looking at here because ours is a two to five megahertz array.

So this is linear phased array operated by applying voltage pulses to all elements not a small group in the assembly as a complete group, but with small, less than microsecond time differences. Uh, or phasing essentially so that the resulting sound pulse may be sent over a specified path direction. If the same time differences are used each time, the process is repeated, the same direction will result repeatedly. However, the time difference phase in the change with this successive repetition so that each beam direction can continually change as each pulse travels in a slightly different direction that can reside and then result in sweeping of the beam, producing a sector image in which the scan lines fan out in different directions from a common starting point.

This phase array is sometimes called an electronic sector transducer. There you go. Who knew? Phasing can also be applied on reception of echo, so the array can listen by most sensitive in a particular direction. but phasing can also be applied to that uh group based firing structure in linear sequence to raise as well.

So yeah, there you go. Um, that's the sector type image that you get with a curved array like this. Cool. But yeah, What? they're actually uh doing inside this particular one.

Inside this ultrasound, you can probably program the thing to do different things. I'd be stunned if it didn't have the flexibility to, uh, you know, if I group them and phase them in different way, uh, ways and stuff like that. So yeah, uh, like, is it 128? Did anyone count 128 elements in there? Possibly. I don't know.

So yeah, that flat flex would all be hot bar attached to right across there and I'm sure it's uh, not easy to do all this. I'm sure there'd be a lot of uh, finesse involved in this thing. And yeah, does anyone want to try and guess the uh pin pitch in there? Hmm. Really impressed by that and I'm glad.

As I said, I'm glad that wasn't potted so that we can see it. And if we peel off the mylar tape there, ta-da There you go. See how they've got that that bundles all the wires together? I think they do. They do run as a ribbon, do they? But anyway, there you go.

You can see the once again hot bar attachment and if we peel that off, we're probably just going to peel the whole lot off. Jumps down through the Vias down to the inner layers and as I said, V is stitched around the outside so all the electrons don't escape and then jumps back up. And they've got a route around these alignment spigots as well. Ah, that's pesky.

So there you have it that is inside a well. I'm assuming that that the modern ones would be exactly the same. like this one I think dates from like uh, you know, 20 plus years ago. but like they make exactly the same model.

So maybe they've you know, refined the manufacturing processes or something like that. But the shielding and all the other stuff which goes into it would be exactly the same because they've got the same model number. I assume that they're going to have like the same head on this. They've probably been using that same ceramic transducer technology for like 20 years or something like that Um, you know, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

So that's very cool. So yeah, we got, uh, got lucky there. We got some nice connector action, we've got some beautiful uh, Emc inductor action going on there for you inductor fan boys. and we've got the ceramic action going on here for the ceramic fan boys.

And and it's just like fantastic. What goes into one of these little uh ultrasound probes? Absolutely terrific. So now next time you're being uh, probed in a hospital, or in the back of an ambulance, uh, somewhere. Well, maybe you've got something better to think about.

But yeah, just think about the ultrasound here. You know, two to five megahertz for this. You know you can talk to the, uh, talk to the doctors in there. Oh yeah, using the uh, C5 curved array.

Oh yeah, yeah, that works from two to five meg and you know 40 millimeter aperture and stuff. Yeah, know all about it. Saw it on the Eev blog. So anyway, if you like that video, please give it a big a thumbs up.

As always, discuss down below or over on the Eevblog forum or one of my many other platforms I'm on. I'm on everything I sign up with a lot of them. Gives everyone choice. Catch you next time you.