Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Take a Peek Inside the Dane-Elec Memory Plant

Posted by chrisd on from the ooo-pretty-assembling-machines dept.

Megamuch writes: "The tweakers.net guys got to take a tour inside the Dane-Elec memory factory in Ireland and have posted a pictorial tour of their trip. " They give a nice tour with lots of decent photos of the process that the comany goes through to package up chips. Fascinating stuff.

3 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. why are memory factories in ireland? by httpamphibio.us · · Score: 2, Interesting

    aren't there a lot of hard drive and ram companies in ireland and the surrounding area? just wondering why that is, considering manufacturing seems to be about a billion time cheaper in asia.

    --
    sig.
  2. Not that exciting.... by seanadams.com · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This isn't a chip fab - they're just stuffing boards... still, nice photos of the whole process. I had a chance to see a shop like this in person, and took a bunch of photos and even some video (536K MPEG) of the process. The machines are quite mesmerizing (sp?) to watch, and it's amazing the amount of human and automated quality control that goes into manufacturing this stuff.

  3. Re:because caucasians are just to damn tall. by seanadams.com · · Score: 3, Interesting
    things like PCI sockets were installed by HAND.

    Automated placement of large through-hole parts is generally not feasible because:
    • due to the size of these parts, they can't be handled efficiently by machines. It would take tons of packing material to put them in reels, and the placement arm would need a very large gripper in order to pick them up. Humans do quite well at pulling them out of a big bucket.
    • if the part has lots of pins, it's difficult for the machine to aling. These parts are often shipped in bags, and many of them will have bent pins. People are pretty good at fixing those one the spot...
    • there are usually very few such parts on a board, so its not even worth optimizing it if you could. You might have a couple PCI slots, a transformer, and giant cap, etc. It's not like inserting hundreds of little resitors by hand...


    Even some surface mount parts are installed by hand - you'd be amazed. Any kind of custom connector or non-standard package is probably installed by hand, even for volume production. SO-DIMM sockets, for example, are installed by hand - they have little plastic guide pins to align them.