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I'm surprised by how manual the whole process is. I think labour is so expensive in the west that any manufacturing of small low value items is incredibly highl
by leoedin 12y ago
I'm surprised by how manual the whole process is. I think labour is so expensive in the west that any manufacturing of small low value items is incredibly highly automated (see youtube for lots of videos of how huge automated production lines work). There's no way you could employ someone to manually bond 80 LEDs a minute in the west and still have a competitive product.
- madengr 12y agoIt's at least a semi-automated bonder, so once you get the step and repeat tuned in, it's usually a matter of just pushing the button and visually verifying. Still though, looking into a microscope 12 hours/day is tedious.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y agoI'm not so sure. Let's assume you're paying someone $15/hour and she actually costs you $25/hour. Assuming a 10 minute break every hour (that's gotta be tiring work and you want to hold onto your employees), then that's 2500/(80 * 50) = 0.625 cents of labor cost per LED. I don't know what all the other costs are, but that one operation seems surprisingly cheap.
- DanBC 12y agoI'm stupid. EDIT: I am! Thanks for the corrections!!
- johnchristopher 12y ago> We were told they can align over 80 per minute or about 40,000 per day.
- parker94 12y agoWow that's impressive
- bluefinity 12y agoThe worker makes 80 LEDs per minute.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gcb0 12y agothose salaries are 10% more than a target employee in california and 60% over a wallmart employee. so i think the costs per led are even lower...
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y agoLike I said, you want to hold onto your employees for more than a week ;-)
- leoedin 12y agoJust looking on Digikey, the unit price for a 5mm LED is somewhere between 3 and 4 cents. In that price there's distributor markup, transport, supply chain markup, the cost of the components and the cost of labour. I'm not too familiar with the economics of electronic components, but I'd be very surprised if the manufacturer sees more than 30% of the final price. That would mean the manufacturer would be spending half the cost of the finished product on a single step of the manufacturing process. I'd be surprised if that's economically viable.
- null_ptr 12y agoI don't envy the eyesight of the worker that has to look through a microscope their entire shift, this was sad to read.
- jpindar 12y agoHave you used an industrial quality binocular microscope? I do - though not continuously - and they're not at all unpleasant. The eyepieces are individually adjustable, as is the interocular spacing.
- sitkack 12y agoWe should make a raspberry powered microscope that can project onto a 22" HD display. It would be awesome if Lytro had a realtime USB version of their camera.
- madengr 12y agoNeeds to be steroscopic or else you'd be nailing bonds down in the wrong location. No substitute for a good stereo microscope for microelectronics work.
- gipp 12y agoI used to work as a lab tech at one of the leading US LED manufacturers, and automated tools most definitely exist for all the steps pictured here (and they were typically done in a cleanroom, as well). Can't speak to what was done in China, though.
- wintersFright 12y agoI've been watching "how it's made" tv series with my kids. That has been an eye opener on where there are lots of people doing things I assumed (ignorantly) would be automated Helps me be less of a tight ass too knowing how much manual labour is in some things!