Hallowed Out
With everything but the glued-down switch removed, all that is left is the three-sided shell. You can clearly see the classic extruded aluminum body shape with screw channels near each corner and the groove the rear cover slips into at the top.
Extruded aluminum enclosures are convenient when you manufacture a range of products that require slightly different lengths of the same general shape. Order full-length runs and cut them down to whatever size you require.
Spilling The Beans
Unlike the box shot, where the diagnostic PCB is shown with all of its wires neatly tied together, the wires are actually all over the shop. It didn't look like there was this much wiring in here, based on Tripp-Lite's shot.
Something Troublesome
I see something potentially troublesome: the two outlets on the right are connected using rear-entry solid wires, while the other two on the left are connected directly to the PCB.
Along the bottom, you can see the daisy-chained ground connections, starting with the PCB's ground wire on the left crimped to another wire using a fork connector.
Hitting A Snag
These Rong Feng outlets with snare-type connections have no wire release slots. Even if they did, those slots are usually on the back, which would be of no help with the two outlets nailed directly through the PCB.
What The Packaging Says
Here is a closer look at that PCB image for reference purposes. On it, we can see three fat MOVs, a small X-cap and a common-mode choke on the left edge. A pair of chunky inductors, six more skinny MOVs (only one pair of which equipped with a visible thermal cut-off), three toroidal inductors and two more X-caps are on the right edge.
What You Actually Get
The PCB has four skinnier-looking MOVs on the left. The two inductors got shifted further apart, presumably to reduce mutual inductance. Two MOV pairs got grouped around a single thermal fuse. And there is only one X-cap at the board's right edge instead of two in the artwork version.
Upon examining the PCB, I cannot help wondering where the “isolated filter banks” advertised on the packaging actually are, unless the company means those toroidal inductors at the bottom are the only isolation between banks.
Wound Up
The front end of both large inductors looks like whoever wound them had a hard time making the wire go from the top layer to component lead cleanly. Since these inductors could be blocking over 2kV during a surge, I am surprised they rely exclusively on their enamel coating to prevent arcing between layers. The first and third layer wires are also crossing quite close to each other.
The other components comprising the isobar's line input are four Ceramate 20D391K, a 100nF Carli X2 cap, a common-mode choke and a 15A fuse. I was surprised to see MOVs rated at 390V here, instead of the usual 200V 20D201K.
Back-End
All six MOVs in this shot are the expected 20D201K. The two at the top are across live and neutral after the large ferrite bead inductors, while the four at the bottom are split between live-ground and neutral-ground. A 1µF X2 Carli cap completes the isobar's bulk filtering circuit.
Drawing A Blank
There is not a lot to see from below, since the whole PCB is covered by a sheet of heat-resistant material pinned down by two of the four outlets.
Nailed
Those outlets are not going anywhere, either. As mentioned, they are nailed directly through the PCB by a pair of gauge 14 jumpers through two holes on each side. Since I could not even manage to pull one of the single wires out of the wired outlets, there is no chance of prying outlets off the PCB without wrecking something.
If you were wondering about the wimpy-looking piece of wire in the middle, that's a fusible link between the four N-G/L-G MOVs and ground.
