Redbeard
Official Corsair Rep.
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2005
- Messages
- 1,859
Not that anybody here is still on dial-up, but you know...
I took some pictures earlier today, thought you guys might be interested.
Our manufacturing floor is split up into two main sections.
The Manufacturing Area
and
The Testing Area
In the manufacturing area, we have huge ovens that bake the ICs onto the module. The way that DDR2 works is this. You have an IC package (the actual RAM) that sits on top of tiny, solid solder balls, which sit on top of a PCB that has appropriate divots for the balls to sit in. You then pass them through an oven, and the oven melts the solder to fasten the IC to the PCB. The oven does not get hot enough to damage the IC, just hot enough to melt the solder.
Here's the oven entrance
(you can see the bare PCBs on the right, getting ready to be placed on the conveyor belt to go into the oven)
Here's the oven exit
When the modules are done, they slide down this ramp and hang out to cool off for a bit before they are tested individually and then sent back to have heatspreaders attached.
Once they're out of the oven, we place them on carts and wheel them over to test.
Here's some PRO modules that are ready to test
They are placed in a frame and heatspreaders are attached by hand.
Here's one of our line workers attaching some heatspreaders with the TIM
Those of you familiar with our line know that the PRO modules have LED lights on top.
The PRO heatspreaders are specially designed to allow the light to shine through
Over on the "test" side of things, we use a few high-end boards.
Like these Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxes
Or these EVGA 680i SLI boards
We also screen modules with a known-good module to make sure dual channel works
If something fails test, we can usually determine what it is. Sometimes it's something as simple as a bad solder point or a failing single IC. No sense in throwing away a $200 module for a $10 IC, right?
We have people that re-work modules with known-good parts.
In this picture, she's using heat to melt the solder under a new IC.
Our RMA guys love their jobs
Except when people cause intentional damage
For those of you guys interested in our PSUs, here's our Chroma tester (right) and one of our ovens (blue thing), where we test the PSUs at their rated temp specs
And here's a smattering of pics of modules, in case you guys wanted to see them:
Dominators before and after heatsink attachment
The pink bags with paperwork in them are to tell the floor guys where each set goes and how it's to be handled. Some are 6400C3, some are 8888C4, etc. They're usually labeled at this point as well.
Here's XMS after labeling. These are ready to be packaged and shipped.
I'll answer questions you guys had if anything comes up. I just thought you might be interested in seeing this stuff.
I took some pictures earlier today, thought you guys might be interested.
Our manufacturing floor is split up into two main sections.
The Manufacturing Area
and
The Testing Area
In the manufacturing area, we have huge ovens that bake the ICs onto the module. The way that DDR2 works is this. You have an IC package (the actual RAM) that sits on top of tiny, solid solder balls, which sit on top of a PCB that has appropriate divots for the balls to sit in. You then pass them through an oven, and the oven melts the solder to fasten the IC to the PCB. The oven does not get hot enough to damage the IC, just hot enough to melt the solder.
Here's the oven entrance
(you can see the bare PCBs on the right, getting ready to be placed on the conveyor belt to go into the oven)
Here's the oven exit
When the modules are done, they slide down this ramp and hang out to cool off for a bit before they are tested individually and then sent back to have heatspreaders attached.
Once they're out of the oven, we place them on carts and wheel them over to test.
Here's some PRO modules that are ready to test
They are placed in a frame and heatspreaders are attached by hand.
Here's one of our line workers attaching some heatspreaders with the TIM
Those of you familiar with our line know that the PRO modules have LED lights on top.
The PRO heatspreaders are specially designed to allow the light to shine through
Over on the "test" side of things, we use a few high-end boards.
Like these Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxes
Or these EVGA 680i SLI boards
We also screen modules with a known-good module to make sure dual channel works
If something fails test, we can usually determine what it is. Sometimes it's something as simple as a bad solder point or a failing single IC. No sense in throwing away a $200 module for a $10 IC, right?
We have people that re-work modules with known-good parts.
In this picture, she's using heat to melt the solder under a new IC.
Our RMA guys love their jobs
Except when people cause intentional damage
For those of you guys interested in our PSUs, here's our Chroma tester (right) and one of our ovens (blue thing), where we test the PSUs at their rated temp specs
And here's a smattering of pics of modules, in case you guys wanted to see them:
Dominators before and after heatsink attachment
The pink bags with paperwork in them are to tell the floor guys where each set goes and how it's to be handled. Some are 6400C3, some are 8888C4, etc. They're usually labeled at this point as well.
Here's XMS after labeling. These are ready to be packaged and shipped.
I'll answer questions you guys had if anything comes up. I just thought you might be interested in seeing this stuff.