Video: watch an SSD get made at the Runcore factory
By Laura June 
posted July 28th 2009 2:11PM
posted July 28th 2009 2:11PM
posted July 28th 2009 2:11PM
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I want it narrated by Mark Summers.
I see a scissor in the photo. *shudder*
Tweezer.
A scissor?
I want to ball that chick.
I care, but not enough to watch a 20 minute video.
Put one of these or a 64 gig in a pmp and I'm there.
hope they didn't snatch a prototype while they toured the building
everything about this is awesome!
i would love to see a weekly feature where something is made!
REALLY COOL!
first YES. btw it was abit boring that video.
Talk like Yoda you do.
Watching components mounted is the new watching paint dry...
Slow news day?
this goes along with "Sent from my "
apple fans have to let everyone know anytime they do anything. It does nothing but waste the reader's time.
this goes along with "Sent from my "
apple fans have to let everyone know anytime they do anything. It does nothing but waste the reader's time.
wow that dude doesn't even know waht resistors and capacitors are, you shouldn't call yourselve a tweaker imho ;)
Sent from iphone is default on Mail. You can get rid of it. Also this wasnt sent from my iPhone, it was sent from my PC. k thnx
The should put a disclaimer "No employees were being harmed during the manufacturing of all Runcore's SSD." LOL. Everybody should start putting this disclaimer on any of their videos involving clips from the factories in China.
hahah the girl at the end is a cutie ^_^
ahhh the things humans can put together jus makes me smile :]
That's how I would've done it too.
am i the only one who saw a laptop cooler up for recession antidote?
You did it wrong. It's supposed to be "Is Skyblaze the only one who saw a laptop cooler up for recession antidote?"
owow, you caught on... guess you can tell im not feeling well today, ya digg... skyblaze talk's gotta hold off till i get better :)
I wish the reporter had a little bit more know how of the processes we saw. I for myself work in a company which produces electronics itself in quite the same way, but with other types of machines. So it could be a little more technically for me.
I'm absolutely wondering about how "low" tech the smt lines are arranged, no automatic inspections of the solder paste (the right amount of paste is an absolutely quality improvement), no inline automatical components inspections either. Also a little bit weird was that there is no unloader at the end of the smt line, so you need one person which manually extracts all the boards. I think there can be a lot of improvements done.
Another thing which I was looking forward too, was how they seperate the ssd boards from the panel but this wasn't shown. When we speak of durability of electronical components it is necessary to don't stress the boards mechanically.
Everything is pretty much the same as the factory that I work at in China. Can't expect full automation when machine cost so much (relative to labour). In fact, some of our SMT line uses manual application of solder paste. Separation of boards are usually done with a V-cut machine or a quick snap......
At the lines for my company, they depanel with a router, not by snapping. There is a fair bit of inspection (including AOI), but no automated paste amount verification. Boards are put into carriers to go to the FA line by hand, not automatically.
i hate how tha guy talks...gah
That's not a "high speed SMT machine". It's a pick-and-place machine. And it's running in super slow-mo for some reason, maybe to show it off better.
SMT is an entire process, which includes placing the parts and the reflow ovens (the hot tunnel with monitored temps) that you see there.
THEY'RE HIGH SPEED I GET IT!
It's just reminded me how everything is pretty much made like that.
I am sure they got permission from Apple to use Macintosh startup sound...
From AirBus creating an entire plane in China to Obama deepening ties to this.
What about American manufacturing?
Oh well.
Simple. There aren't as many cute girls in US manufacturing, so nobody cares about it.
girls at these asian factories are often quite good looking
i got a tour or 3 factories in china producing jewlery
Did they say Holla! at the end of the video? wtf China?
She said "hao la", which means "It's done".
At 6:25 Does it say "Lead Free | Apploved" ?
Were they going for "approved" or was that just a horribly stereotypical thought to have?
Heh.
Part of the R is broken off.
The l/r confusion is Japanese, not Chinese.
It brings joy to my heart that most of the machines used in the manufacturing process were produced in Western countries (a good number of them in the US actually). What I don't understand is how it's cheaper to ship these machines to China, set up a (mostly automated) factory to produce goods, and then ship the goods back here that it is just to set up the factory here. *Sigh*.
Are you kidding? Those workers make probably $9,000 USD a year (Hangzhou already has a fairly high income level)...and the actual physical factory building cost probably 1/5th of what it would cost here to put it up here in the US.
The vast majority of the cost of any product made in the USA is labor and not materials used, whereas in China it's often the opposite since it's very easy for the materials cost to exceed labor cost.
If you ever go visit China you'll notice this weird skew in pricing-stuff that's cheap in the US because the cost of the item is largely materials is crazy expensive (relative to other products) in China. Whereas stuff that's crazy expensive in the US because of the intense labor involved is crazy cheap in China if it's made out of cheap materials (plastics, glass, wood, etc.).
So a crazy intricate hand carved piece of art is cheap, whereas if you wanted to buy a heavy heatsink in China it'd cost a ton even though it didn't take that much labor to make because the price of the metal would be high.
BTW Hangzhou is a pretty nice city to visit although if you're used to American portions you may find yourself hungry unless you're hitting up an all you can eat buffet.
Wow, that's a first - guy with an Apple logo without anything against M$.
I get it, that's why he said 'first'.
reminds me of a cheap porno.
These are the ones I could locate
Solder paste dispenser: Ekra...Germany
Pick&Place: Siemens...Germany
Oven: Heller USA
Automatic Optical Inspection: Omron...Japan
That screenprinter looked like a dek to me, although I believe that is still Germany
The male host is a complete douche. Learn how to hold a camera steady? Who goes to a factory like this and can't keep their camera steady and then edits the footage using Pinnacle?
Was that Windows 98 running on the x-ray machine?
Is it just me,or do I not see a video link?
Back on topic...
Its nice to see that humans inspect this stuff, even with how complex the construction machinery is :).
i wouldn't mind taking home a few ssd souvenirs
That final process from the beginning of the firmware load to the packaging seems very slow. I would think they would have a machine to load in a dump firmware to 100 at a time.
Looked like he was taping the contacts to something for the load. Even a quick clamp seems like it would be better for that spot.
I suppose 10,000 cheap labor would be as fast as 10 high speed packaging machines though.
No wonder these things cost so much; there's too much manual labor involved. I'd imagine the all of the people involved would be working faster than they were, however their automated verification process seemed to be quite slow and everything at the Runcore facility doesn't make sense. I would have expected an automated system to load the firmware, format the filesystem (which doesn't make sense for a "disk"), run speed test, assemble the unit, and package it. I couldn't believe the guy was manually hooking it to a PC to load the firmware, then put it into a netbook for a speed test, and then back to the PC to clear the test data and load some software. At most I would expect someone to put it into a machine that runs a script to do all of that.