Disassembly design

Notes from Nicholas Bodley on dismantling an XO

I'm a retired electronic tech. (lifetime...) with more than average interest in design, engineering, and manufacturing. In recent years, I've opened up a number of typical laptops, so I've had a chance to see what typical insides look like.

As Mel dismantled, I was delighted to see how well everything fitted together; after all, an XO is meant to be dustproof, and closely-fitting major parts help.

One critical point, although not the most important, was a delight to discover: The screws fit into brass tapped (threaded) inserts that are molded into place. It's less costly to simply provide an undersized hole, and let the screw (more like a wood screw) deform the plastic. However, one has to be careful, when replacing such screws, to use the existing threads (IIrc, I gave Mel more info on that), or else the plastic in the hole becomes "chewed up" and the screw won't hold. (Procedure: Using gentle pressure, turn the screw backwards until you feel a gentel "click" as the threads align. Then, tighten it.)

Many other details were very nice to see. Nothing that I saw was done cheaply.

Although I haven't seen the insides of the latest laptops, I feel rather confident in saying that the insides are made as well as those of, say, a $1,500 laptop, if not even more costly. The insides are anything but junk!

It occurs to me that Quanta must have well-established design (?) and manufacturing standards and procedures intended for regular (= relatively costly) laptops, so the XO benefits from those; economies of scale are beneficial, here.

The AMD Geode CPU is attached and connected by a ball-grid array; that's definitely high tech! Afaik, analyzing connection quality requires x-raying.

Having spare screws (with their own brass inserts, as well, of course!) was a delightful surprise.

Btw, that metallic coating inside is metal; try the resistance range of your DMM. The coating might be applied by flame spraying.