As confusing and difficult as this project was, at the end of the day I found it to be extremely interesting. My group, group 9, took apart a 2002 Panasonic Palm recorder. The video device was ahead of its time- for a 2002 digital product. Taking it apart was rather difficult. We lost some screws and misplaced some of the small items that were attached to the camera. We also had a hard time breaking the plastic and getting to the core of the device. The coolest part was seeing the camera part of the camcorder. It was really interesting to see how the camera was attached and learning how all these pieces come together and function as one item.
However, as fun as it was to tear apart and destroy the core of this camcorder- the difficult part of this project was attempting to locate where these pieces of the product were manufactured. Since our device is rather old, it was hard to find locations. Japan was a huge one, and also China of course. We tried looking up the device model/serial numbers to find locations. I ended up finding a website that was entirely in Japanese that listed a bunch of parts and random circuit boards- but sadly I couldn’t find our pieces (probably because our device is outdated).
Panasonic Parts
Giant (main) circuit board: The board itself is made from china, but the little black chips are all made in japan. Some of the chips have a little M logo on it which stands for Matsushita Panasonic. Konosuke Matsushita is the founder of Panasonic.
Speaker: Made from KDK in japan but when you look at the KDK website, or the wikipedia page, they only make air vents, electric fans etc.. nothing about speakers but they have a catalogue with the speaker that was used in the Palmcorder.
Lens Components: Flexboard: Constructed in Japan/China, Zoom Motors, High Flexibility Cable: YoungShin (US trading office of South Korean company) 1320 Tower Road, Suite 111 | Schaumburg, IL 60173
Batteries: Likely Carbon Zinc or Nickel Hybride in the interior, rechargeable Lithium Ion externally, likely silver-palladium mix or tin/copper wiring
LCB power PCB Circuit Board: Could be either Made from: P. T. SANYO Jaya Components Indonesia (Components Division Capacitor Unit) or PT. Panasonic Industrial Devices Batam but we think it is more likely made from the components division unit.
As understood from above information, we tried our best to do this project, but if we wanted to do more of an accurate job I feel as if we should have done a product that was not as ancient. Like explained earlier, it was very difficult to gain information and locate factories in which parts were made due to how old the device was. Some of the factories that produced parts for our camcorder might have shut down or relocated.
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