Sorry for the bad quality.

My grandfather had this in his office. He worked as a computer engineer so I initally thought it was a zoomed-in picture of a computer chip or something, but maybe it is something large.

He’s not alive anymore so I can’t ask him. If somebody can help me out, that would be great.

  • Mastema@infosec.pubEnglish
    34·
    10 months ago

    I believe this is the inside of an industrial, water-tube boiler. Like where it is being manufactured. If you look in the upper left, you can see tubes to be welded in. It isn’t a perfect match, but those openings in the pipes look like where blowdown piping would go in. Source, I designed piping systems for these.

    Edit: If you click on the small images on this page you can see a lot of piping that looks just like this: https://balcke-duerr.com/en/service-solutions/boiler-projects-services/

    That said, it is really difficult to get a sense of scale here and this could be some much smaller heat transfer device that just uses the same design.

  • AGD4@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    10 months ago

    That reminds me of the internals of the Apollo Guidance Computer. Not sure though.

  • mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
    164·
    10 months ago

    Not sure why people think this might be huge. You can clearly see solder spots in the lower right and standardized holes in the upper left that are probably small screw sized. I’d guess all those rods are standard computer pins, just really long. I think it looks like some sort of pre-breadboard breadboard project to me.

    • Gork@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      It looks to be about the size of a briefcase based on those screw holes. It would make sense for the picture to be taken by someone from above.

    • towerful@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      It looks to me like something big ontop of other big things.
      Those “screw holes” in the top left look like crane hook points for moving the big things underneath.
      There is a picture elsewhere on the post that shows similar divert-holes with a person standing through it.
      And it looks like a pile of junk near the top of the photo.

      There are odd diverts on the left and right sides.
      I bet they are ladder/access points, which would match the scale of a person standing through the hexagonal diverts, and would match the crane hook points.

      Regardless of scale, its certainly a heat exchanger and not anything IC or circuit related

    • ShepherdPie@midwest.socialEnglish
      41·
      10 months ago

      Totally agree about the solder spots on the right and the lower middle. I think this is some sort of IC or crude, early processor. These lines would feed in/out power and data and in the proceeding decades, have been shrunk down to be contained entirely inside the processor with nothing more than pins sticking out the bottom.

  • MD756@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2111·
    10 months ago

    Never mind what the picture is…why is it sitting on a large bed of ramen?

  • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    111·
    10 months ago

    That’s pipe management done well for a big project. No idea what exactly tho. Part of it does look like a heatsink, like others said.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    Definitely the sort of picture that (when displayed upon your wall) gets you a ton of ass.

  • thirteene@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    As others mentioned it looks like a heat sink, they create a lot of surface area and blow air through to the device in order to help dissapate heat and prevent the device from overheating.

  • massacre@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    10 months ago

    Those are definitely pipes. It looks like a complex heat exchanger and given the size and the further array under it, I’d wager it’s a nuclear reactor assembly.