Video: watch an SSD get made at the Runcore factory

Ever wonder how an SSD gets made? TweakTown's been on-site at the Runcore facility in Hangzhou, China as of late, and hot on the heels of testing its 1.8-inch Pro IV SSD line, they've taken a tour of the facility to see one of them being produced. During their tour, Runcore had the 128GB 1.8-inch ZIF Pro IV drive on the line, and it's a pretty interesting affair. The factory itself is not operated by Runcore, but you'll get to see the high speed SMT (Surface Mount Technology) machine in action, and also get a peek of the testing phase! Check the video after the break.

[Brydman Posted Jul 29th 2009 10:51AM]

I'm almost certain what we saw wasn't the "actual" everyday work in the factory. Due to the interview video they probably did everything "step by step" and "one at a time", so to speak. For instance, I doubt they only have one employee bagging and tagging SSD's at a time, but it would be unnecessary to video a dozen people doing it.

Just my 3 cents ;)
(inflation)

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 28th 2009 6:05PM]

thats awesome it seems like the 2 last parts take a while though

[Ha Posted Jul 28th 2009 6:32PM]

It would be cool if at the end of the tour, the ssds that you followed would be yours to keep.

[iqbalj Posted Jul 28th 2009 6:39PM]

To me it looks as if the jailbait iPhone girl has found a new job making SSD!
Can't wait for the lucky buyer who gets one with her photos preloaded!!

[TrumanHW Posted Jul 28th 2009 7:55PM]

Holy CRAP someone needs to learn what and why someone would EDIT video. 20 minutes? Lame.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 28th 2009 7:02PM]

I worked for a company that had all this equipment or similar. I wish this guy knew a little more to inform you all. Those BGA or ball grid array (chips) are very complex with balls of paste underneath them when it places them. That's why you see the machine going slower when placing bigger chips like those. They also check these carefully when doing an xray because sometimes they can be skewed underneath; they are usually the most expensive part (the brains if you will) so you want to fix it asap.

The first part where he says "transistors" on the board is false. From what I can tell the SMT machine only placed the smaller resistors on the board. Usually you do your smaller parts first because you don't want the machine to knock over or shift larger parts as it glides across the board. Sometimes these parts can also get stuck in the air nozzles or fall off the nozzles before it places them so it's the reason you have a person check it when it comes out of the machines. We once had about a 120+ boards run through with the wrong part number (not my fault but engineerings). It's a costly mistake as you have to spend the next several hours or usually days busting out the soldering iron removing the chip only to take up production time by rerunning it through the machines again to replace the part. It's sometimes cheaper to scrap the whole board and take the losses due to amount of labor it would take. Removing those larger micro chips is such a pain in the pooper.

The work is tedious if your on the line and even worse if your the one fixing the mistakes. My actual job was optimizing the custom programming for the SMT lines so I didn't have to deal with the crappy part of the job so much. I'd typically load those part reels too and set up jobs on the machines. The job was great except management was a bunch of Nazis so I had to get out of there but overall you basically saw the whole process. The company I worked for typically made GPS devices, audio devices, and home automation devices.

[spin cycle Posted Jul 28th 2009 10:05PM]

NAND (including these) are packaged in LGA, not BGA. And the balls on a BGA are solder balls, not solder paste balls.

There's no reason it has to move slower in X and Y in order to move slower in Z (when dropping the chip).

This place machine has an optical checker it puts the chip over, this may catch the wrong part (reel) being loaded. Or then again it might not, depending on how differently the correct and incorrect parts look.

[Eternal Density Posted Jul 28th 2009 7:09PM]

See core.
See core run.
Runcore, run!

[raaaaaa Posted Jul 28th 2009 7:36PM]

i will wait for the "HOW IT'S MADE" show

[danw635 Posted Jul 28th 2009 9:01PM]

I had no idea that there was so much human interaction with the product before shipping. I figured it would all be automated.

[AniMill Posted Jul 28th 2009 9:21PM]

Agreed with the human interaction issue... how the hell do they produce so many units for world consumption with it taking so long to "wrap them up" so to speak? Amazing, if not tedious to watch or work.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 29th 2009 1:38AM]

SSDs yes!

[osomphane Posted Jul 29th 2009 1:41AM]

Making account with proper email :)

[Dr Wreck Posted Jul 29th 2009 9:32AM]

This video is about 18 minutes too long.

[Yuusou Posted Jul 30th 2009 1:20AM]

If I replace my stock samsung ssd, I'll probably replace it with a runcore. Now I know where it'll come from. Pretty cool.

[soupisgoodfood Posted Jul 30th 2009 4:52AM]

These movies could be so much better if people just spent a little time shooting for editing and narrating later.