How’s your Motherboard Manufactured?

Time to apply the heat and solder the components. Unfortunately, we couldn’t photograph this part, as it happens inside a closed environment. There’s a quick visual check at this point to ensure that everything is okay.



What’s been heated has to be cooled, right? So, the board is now washed, using jets of water that also cleans away extra solder, unsoldered components, and other loose particles, if any.


Still to come are the even larger components that have to be placed by hand and wave soldered.

The bigger components

and those made of plastic are mounted now. It’s done manually on an

assembly line type of table. Components that go in now include the

slot raisers, ports, AMR (Audio Modem Raiser), and power connectors.

The

board is then wave soldered. It moves up an incline, with molten

solder flowing down in the opposite direction. The level of solder is

controlled, so that it doesn’t spill on the upper surface of the

board, and at the same time, doesn’t miss out any part of the lower

surface.

The motherboard is now complete.

The

board is done. But is it ready? The last part of the process is

testing and quality checks. Each board is put to test. If the board

passes the tests, it’s stamped, packed in anti-static bags, and made

ready for shipping. If it fails, it’s passed on to a second group of

testers, who try and salvage the board, correct errors, and then send

it back to the first group for re-testing.