How Raspberry Pis are made (Factory Tour)

Huge thanks to Sony for the tour, and to Seeed Studio for sponsoring! Get $25 off reTerminal DM with: Jeff*reTerminalDM

#RaspberryPi #Factory #Sponsored

Thanks especially to the whole team at Raspberry Pi and the UK Sony Technology Centre, especially:

- Alan, our excellent driver (who made sure we got to and from Wales safely)
- Toby and Natalie from Raspberry Pi for assisting, helping with a few camera angles
- Kalina, Zac, Andrew, Eliot, and all the other gracious folks from Sony who made this video possible
- Brian for sending some shots of the pick and place machines in action
- My wife, for holding down the fort while I was full nerd mode in the UK

Contents:

00:00 - Baking Pis
02:35 - Inspection and royal invitations
03:37 - Robots!
04:46 - Humans!
06:32 - Selective Soldering
07:24 - Pis building Pis
08:26 - Final QA and beds of nails
09:04 - Building Pis: it takes two
10:19 - Pack it up
13:08 - Lots of Pis

[SmithyScotland]

This must be the first detailed look at the Sony production line in the Pi's history. Good one Jeff.

[prb]

I worked at Sony Pencoed's IT department in the late 1990s when they were churning out a million CRT TVs and monitors a year. Thousands of people worked there back then along with thousands more at the nearby Bridgend plant that made the tubes. While there, I wrote a "Mainline operation standards" system that allowed line managers to produce printed documents (using the bill of materials information from the ERP system) showing line workers the order in which through-hole components should be placed on PCBs - down to which of the worker's hands should be used for each step. This video brings back so many memories and shows how much things have changed in the past 25 years, not least the line workers. I had no idea that Sony Pencoed was still operating, given the demise of CRTs. It's nice to know that my many Pis were baked in Pencoed!

[MarcoGPUtuber]

They're made with magic. And magic is in short supply.

[mausball]

Those two armed robots were first used on the HandiCam line in the mid 80s. Their development and tuning was a fascinating story.

[kancheongspidergaming]

Due to my inexperience at the time in using lead-free solder, I faced the 'popcorn' effect on certain through-hole joints. Turns out the right temperature and procedure is important to achieve a good solder joint. Nothing but respect for the engineers out there who had to go through lots of trial and error to achieve the optimal reflow zones.

[johnp-e]

I used to work for the company that made the box errector and the box closer. Additinally i can recognise a lot of their stuff on the packing line. Great to see they are still going strong and that some of the deisngs I helped to develpo are still in use.

[andrewpuntan]

It was a huge pleasure to meet you and take you on a tour of our facility Jeff!

I hope we get a chance to catch up again soon and keep the fantastic video's coming!

[ExplainingComputers]

Excellent video. Really enjoyed this. Thanks Jeff.

[michaelterrell]

I was doing SMD manufacturing almost 25 years ago. They were VME/VXI size boards to build a Software Defined (Telemetry) Receiver for NASA. It was all hand placed then run through a then state of the art Heller reflow oven. Then the few through hole were had soldered.

[thomasscheidegger]

Thanks Jeff for this video, as well to the Sony staff - so encouraging to see this production done in Europe!

[StarcoreLabs]

This is a massively powerful video. Thank you Jeff for taking the time to make it. It shows how much effort goes into each Pi. Those factory workers are awesome!

[alexlandherr]

It’s nice to see more location videos by Jeff. I’m excited for all future timing-related stuff.

EDIT: And a possible review of the picamera2 library once it’s out of beta.

[zblurth]

I love factory tour, they are like a amusement park but for really cool engineering challenge
also huge respect to all the skilled worker that operate them they quite literally make the word turn

[CornFlakesPC]

180.000 - 200.000 units a week and they are still so hard to get. But at least, they are produced in masses (again) - Thanks for the video. Love such content

[buzzebee]

I was lucky enough to visit the factory a few years ago to work on an automation project there. I met with Andrew and the rest of the team. Great guys doing great work. They are super passionate about making pi's and as a user for a number of years I was super excited to be there.

Great video. Must have been a dream come true to be able to visit for you Jeff.

[LoneWolf]

this is cool to see, lets hope they get the supply figured out soon and i cant wait for the pi5 because i know your going to immediately try to plug it into a gpu

[testep]

We now know why there was such a RPi shortage. Jeff caused the line to backup! LOL. Great video man. I love seeing these videos. I've always dreamed of building a DIY assembly line in my basement.

[AndrewAHayes]

The guy who looked like you should have had the red shirt on!
I was impressed that some of the machines had been assembled from aluminium extrusions, the same ones that many CNC and 3D printers are assembled from!

[spriteboost]

Awesome tour of the factory. Also so cool to see it all work love the automation :) Thanks for the cool video.

[HardwareHaven]

This was just beautiful… Great job, Jeff!