The Birth of an Abit NF7 - A Factory Tour

SMT QA

After the SMT process, we can see the transformation that the board has undergone. The north and south bridges are now present, along with thousands of ceramic capacitors and LEDs. This particular board is a K8V Pro, but we would see a very similar end result on the NF7. SMT lines run the same model and do not skip around; we shot this picture from a different line.

Since SMT is the most complicated procedure when producing a motherboard, rigorous testing is done at this point. The boards must past visual inspection to assure no stray SMDs are printed, and then the boards are checked to make sure every SMD is lined up properly. A single offset capacitor can mean the difference between a working and non-working motherboard.

Because of the stringent quality control, the first visual inspection is done with an overlay to help a factory worker inspect the components. You can see this process below. The inspector in this image is looking specifically for misaligned components.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Manual visual inspection is starting to get too costly and inefficient for Abit's means. The important thing to consider about labor in China is that it is very cheap; manual labor is almost always preferred when possible. On some production lines, a $200,000 visual inspection machine replaces the job of two physical inspectors. The machine and a technician can do a more exhaustive examination of a motherboard at a slightly faster pace than 1 traditional visual inspector, but the cost benefit ratio is not very good. The machine technician and the traditional visual inspectors are paid about the same; usually around $100 per month with lodging.

Several attendees on the tour were surprised about the sheer amount of physical labor in a factory like Rolly. Rolly is actually quite small in comparison to some of the other factories that we have seen. It employs 1,400 workers and runs a single 8AM to 5PM shift. Even if it takes 10 workers to do the job of a single $200,000 machine, the cost of the machine usually outweighs the cost of using manual labor. Futuristic, all machine-run factories don't exist in China.

One thing that caught our attention at the Abit factory was the process of quality control. We recall the Elite Group factory tour from a year ago; when workers detected component failure or issues with a board after SMT, the board was completely pitched. At Rolly, we noticed that if a motherboard failed, it was immediately retested. Occasionally, these boards would fail continually, but after several tries, the components would usually pass inspection. Abit representatives explained to us that this procedure was because Rolly purposely sets inspection tolerances too tight and compensates for the extra manpower to test and retest (and retest again) by relying on its relatively cheap workforce.