Opening Up a Satellite Amp-With Pic's

I opened up a few satellite amps and thought I'd put it to pictures.
A quick smack with a hammer and the plastic outer shell splits in half. A couple of amps on the right ready to have the screws and boards removed.



Take a small straight edge screwdriver and with a light tap, it'll go right down into the top of the alum cover. The alum. cover is just pressed down in and siliconed in.
Just gently pry the alum cover off. Then you have about 8-10 small screws and some cast inner covers (called waveguides) and there is your gold board.





The main body can go in your cast bucket along with the waveguides. Here is some boards from them.
First the front of the boards; The boards on the left are actually gold, just the light reflection makes them look silver.


And then the backs, almost solid plated;

why are you using such a good hammer on that junk!? those are nice lookin boards man

Probably both, there was a couple of triples in that mix.
They will be different sizes and shapes but these were Direct Tv LNB's.
My trash co. I work with saves them for me and I buy them as low grade.

here's a pic. of a double amp out front on the dish.

Thanks for the detailed post with pictures.

Originally Posted by FourNines

Thanks for the breakdown pics. In actuality those are not called amps, but LNB's. On home sat dishes, they come in single, double and triple configurations.

Years ago they used to be called LNA's which stood for "low noise amplifier", today their still doing the same thing.
They are amplifying the small signal that the dish is gathering up and directing to the "LNB"

Compliments of Wiki;

The LNB is a combination of low-noise amplifier, frequency mixer, local oscillator and IF amplifier

Just a habit I have from installing Sat. dishes back in the 70's, I sometimes use old terminology.
I cringe at how many of the big LNA amps we threw away while servicing dishes. whew,,,
Here is a small one that Wiki had as a reference pic. you can get a better idea of the plating.

If I recall from back in the day, LNB stood for low noise block amplifier. So, still an amplifier. There were also LNCs.

I stand corrected. I have always known them to be a low noise block down converters, but you're right, it still amplifies the microwave signal. The only reason I stated that they are actually called lnb's is because I didn't want someone going to the local satellite store/installer and asking for their scrap amplifiers and getting a blank look in a return.

I don't know as I've not sold any yet, maybe jghilino can chime in here and shed a little more light
on it.