Inside the Most Famous Chinese LED Factory

[@StrangeParts]

Go to hensonshaving.com/strangeparts and enter "STRANGEPARTS" at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. Watch the next Strange Parts factory tour video early: nebula.tv/videos/strangeparts-inside-a-chinese-cnc-factory Watch this video without ads: nebula.tv/videos/strangeparts-inside-the-worlds-most-famous-led-factory-in-china

[@totally_not_a_robot1342]

i think you may have overloaded the hensonshaving site... it just 503'd me :D edit: it's back now

[@atubebuff]

StrangeParts shows that the manufacturing tech often surpasses the actual product!

[@yuyongbin]

this is awesome

[@AndrewAsbach]

You and this channel are exactly what Elon was talking about on JRE about showing Manufacturing. Great Work! Thank you.

[@crazychild94]

"I was turned into a man who shaves every morning :)" 19:21 . whaddaya talking about my guy

[@LanceCSTCuddy]

I remember when the WS2811 came out, and I said “who the heck is World Semi?” Now, they own the market with their 5050s. Absolutely incredible.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

What gobsmacked me is that yesterday I was looking for a video on the production of 5050 / ws2812b LED strips and matrices. Found nothing. Then this video was posted by this guy. He read my mind.

[@app0the]

WS2811 is also pretty famous in home arcade ops circles for how they are the most dying part on some specific cabs :P

[@ColeBlack2]

Woah! TIL the WS is WS2811 stands for world semi!

[@loganleborgne420]

Hi! I use Samsung lm301h diodes and I heard good things about lm301h EVO for horticultural purposes because of the high efficiency...lumen per watt are some of the highest on those diodes...Is WS have better and cheaper diodes?

[@cvspvr]

​@@loganleborgne420"horticultural purposes"? you're growing weed, aren't you?

[@giant3909]

Seeing those machines operate so fast is truly mesmerizing!! Great video, a joy to watch as always!

[@definedphotography]

Agreed. We need the Slow Mo Guys to make a film of these things in action 😁

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Those pick and place arms look like scaled up harddisk head actuators.

[@Diode5]

How do they even make these machines that manufacture all sorts of tiny things? Are they made bespoke for each factory? And considering how cheap certain products need to be made, what are the costs involved making or buying such a special machine? They seem so specialised and have to operate at great speed and accuracy. It's mind blowing really what we can do, and there has to be people out there that innately understand where technology has progressed to invent machines that operate at the cutting edge of technology. There has to be technology out there that has been invented but the manufacturing technology to make it then has to catch up to try and make it viable. I wonder how big that lag is?

[@ohsweetmystery]

@@Diode5High speed assembly and packaging has been a staple of the industry for decades. These are small machines. Some of the lines are both massive and massively complex.

[@gnorts_mr_alien]

yeah I have seen tons of manufacturing videos showcasing mind blowing machines, but I have not yet seen a video that goes into the design, production and testing of these machines! @@Diode5

[@knightdeluxegaming]

As a maker and hobbyist and do alot of led stuffs, This video is amazing to see like how it was made!

[@Ajaykrishna97_]

Could you share a MOSFET based driver circuit if you have it ?

[@gorak9000]

As a maker and hobbyist, you're probably mostly getting the reject LEDs that are sold below cost!

[@at5950]

@@gorak9000 q0

[@AmusementLabs]

Idk why, but seeing those little guys come to life for the first time inside that testing rig is really beautiful. Fantastic work.

[@motionsick]

As an American I want to say that I appreciate the hard work of the common Chinese worker. It's not lost of some of us that Chinese quality has gotten better and better because this high-end trade work is becoming multi generational. Serious care and thought has gone into teaching the next generation.

[@termsofuniverse7251]

Super cool as always! People wouldn't think, but there's quite a bit that undergoes when creating an LED.

[@Science-Vlog]

People never think, they just pay..

[@poisonouspotato1]

​@@Science-Vlogdeep

[@NeilWNC]

What I notice when watching this is how FEW PEOPLE there are. This level of automation has basically done away with the vast majority of human involvement. Keeps the price way down to be sure, and this really is a game changer. What it underscores is how (at least in this kind of manufacturing) the blue-collar labor force is essentially eliminated. It also shows why mom-and-pop firms have no chance of competing. Impressive and scary at the same time.

[@evilutionltd]

That's incredible how fast and accurate those machines are. It's amazing that people still assume that anything made in China is low quality. I use thousands of these addressable LEDs and have only seen 1 fail.

[@Berkeloid0]

Well he said in the video the ones that don't make the grade are sold off cheaply. So of course if a buyer is looking for the cheapest option, a low quality part from China is going to come up when they're one of the few countries willing to sell seconds. So on the one hand it's good they sell them instead of dumping them in landfill, but on the other hand it means they end up with a reputation of producing low quality products, when really it's just because people are buying them cheap not realising they failed some manufacturing test. If they were more clearly marked and sold as seconds I think it would improve their reputation, but too many people are willing to buy them and sell them as a premium product.

[@LevelUpYourFandom]

WS2812B LEDs are the thing that GOT me into electronics. they are fascinating little gemstones haha this is a very very cool tour, and im glad to see so much of the process. also Scotty, you giving the FULL tour and overview yourself is surprisingly great! i expected having the 'expert' or 'engineer' there to speak up was the best way, but it turns out just having you do and explain all of it yourself is much better in my opinion. either way i LOVE these factory tours!!

[@E-hab]

I like it solo better also without having to read subtitles or trying to understand Chinese accent English.

[@christopherleubner6633]

I remember the first time seeing a blue LED. 💙 very dim about that color. Cost about 12 bucks from a surplus mail order place in the early 90s. Now they have extremely bright ones used in disposable stuff.😂 and some power LEDs rated at multiple watts optical power😮

[@Bijimaru_69]

And what makes it better are we can control it using cheap esp board like esp8266 with wled installed

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@Bijimaru_69or a pi pico using its tiny but powerful PIO to transmit LED data.

[@megamanguy]

red orange yellow and green LEDs from Radio Shack got me into electronics. Some of the red LEDs were even from the Apple II disk drive.

[@audiogek]

Great video! This learned me appreciate the relative high price for these leds. The faster larger double pick and place machine was insane, never seen one with such long arms operate so precise at that speed.

[@Lizlodude]

Yeah, it's like seeing the inside of a hard drive but at like 10x the size

[@Science-Vlog]

it's so insane how fast the machine picks those tiny chips and puts them on the package without dropping or misplacing them by a bit..!

[@SpencerPaire]

This may be my favorite factory yet! Super high tech, but still very easy to understand, and those machines are wild! It's crazy to see how fast they AND precise they are, to pick up stuff smaller than fine sand, and nail it thousands of times per hour! Scotty, the camera work in this video is sublime, your narration is tight, interesting and emotive, just all around the crème de la crème of factory tours here.

[@soilmanted]

I'm not finding the factory easy to understand. Lots of info about how wires are adhered to things, how things are sorted, no explanation of how the things are made.

[@leonardothefabulous3490]

I was the first person doing residential LEDs on Long Island (NY)-back in 2009 and I'm blown away at how far these things have come. But what really impresses me are the machines that make these LEDs (and many other objects). No one else ever talks about or seems interested in the incredible machines and the men who design and companies that build them. Perhaps Strange Parts could do some stories/videos about that???

[@ZeroInDaHouse]

I wish western companies were this open in sharing their manufacturing processes. Good job man on providing us this insight.

[@savagesarethebest7251]

On top of my head I can only think of one and that is SpaceX, but I have seen a lot of videos from other western companies that have invited youtubers to the factory floor and one of them I remember was a dyestamping factory and I think it was Alec Steele who was showing it. But you gotta go and watch Tim Dodd on one of the multiple tours to SpaceX (yes, multiple times when Elon Musk personally shows off the details of their newest engine improvements) ☺️

[@seanephram]

dude i feel like i have been waiting years for this video, THANK YOU

[@StrangeParts]

You’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed it so much.

[@_BangDroid_]

Dude this was one of the coolest factory tours ever made! I have a few thousand of these LED and I always wondered about how they make them. Thank you for the insight and your ability to gain access to such awesome factories.

[@ThereIsNoRoot]

My hobby involves a lot of these kinds of LEDs and it's extremely interesting to see how they're made. Thank you and glad to see you're well 🦾

[@StrangeParts]

Thank - really glad you enjoyed it!

[@zakrzak6028]

Glad to see you doing well after your injury, hope you just get better and better on KZbin!

[@JoelBergmark]

Awesome video! Glad your back In China!

[@Deja117]

Wow... Automation really is something. Quite awesome to watch those little hopper machines work.

[@Crafty266]

The quality of this video is from another world. Thanks for the tour through this factory! The wire bonding was crazy.

[@MakeItHackin]

Strange Parts does the best factory tour videos and this one was so well done. I had no idea there were so many steps into making neopixels. seems like half of the steps is orientation!

[@joonglegamer9898]

One of the best explanation videos of this process I've ever seen. Clearly the factory is experienced and proud of their process (rightfully so), I'm amazed.

[@ddiva1973]

This video was really interesting! You explained all the steps very well, and I appreciate that there was no one speaking Chinese, as this can create a break in the flow imo. The flow was good and took us from the very beginning to the very end. Good job, and I hope to see more!

[@DarkArtGuitars]

This is awesome. Knowing quite a bit about semiconductor manufacturing, it always amazed me how every single one of these LEDs worked. I honestly didn't expect 100% inspection but it makes sense. The little comment about the rejects getting sold at a big discount is a bit concerning as that would explain shady too good to be true priced versions that work, but just not as well.

[@Lizlodude]

It makes sense for certain products, if you're just messing around with some LED tape you probably don't care if some of the LEDs are 10% too bright, but it becomes an issue when it's not communicated properly, which happens too often.

[@E-hab]

Rejected once might not be bad and it's better to use them in low quality\price projects than toss them in the trash or something similar.

[@DarkArtGuitars]

@@E-habAgreed, the problem is just that you usually don't know whether you're getting the real deal or rejects unless you buy from a reputable source.

[@Kiwibloke2025]

Sheer geniuses that come up with this technology and implement it, amazing beyond comprehension of most people. Very clever indeed.

[@april7531]

I'll never look at these RGB LED like i did before watching this video. Thanks, it was amazing to see those machines working.

[@theinfernalcraftsman]

I appreciate that you are back to doing the factory tours as those are some of my favorite videos that you make. I enjoy just watching the bowl feeders etc run. The pick n place arm for those leds looks like the biggest harddrive arm ever made...

[@syproful]

I absolutely love it. This is fantastic. So much engineering disciplines in one spot here. That’s some micro mechanical engineering 🤯

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

WTF!!! You literally posted this video a few hours before I was wondering if there exists a video about the production of addressable LEDs, while I was writing a program to drive a ws2812b matrix.... And yours is the ONLY one that exists! INCREDIBLE.

[@Adventium_]

Those die placing machines are absolutely mesmerizing to watch! I could stare at those for a long time.

[@james2396]

This is so good to see you back making videos again, I hope you're feeling better!

[@Ben79k]

Ive played around with so many types of smd leds over the years and as they have advanced it has fascinated me how everything is on chip. Insane to see how it's done. Thanks for the inside look

[@krtirtho]

Manufacturing machine manufacturers are the most underrated companies/people

[@ReyArteb]

IM always amazed at the manufacturing machines.. who made it.. how did they figure it out.. what were the problems they had to solve while inventing a machine that has never been made before. need a deeper dive into the people who make the machines that make machines! thanks Scotty this was very educational.

[@demoncloud6147]

These machines are made by real heroes whom most of us will never know. Unlike celebrities or political leaders, these heroes never brag and work silently in the background

[@kimchan382]

In the R&D department or University's Lap, they start with small equivalents and end with bigger one by steps by steps with evolving it in between.

[@rabbitazteca23]

probably by the RnD of the department. The people there are paid highly for these machines

[@thoughtsnscribbles]

Danke!

[@lamReaps]

I am so happy that we are finally back to being able to tour a lot of manufacturing places again! Been following for almost 5-6 years. Thanks for another great video!

[@Innuya]

Man, those machines are wild. Shout out to World Semi for giving you so much access/info!

[@makers_lab]

Good to see you looking well now, and so cool to see this. Waiting for a batch of boards from JLC with 2812's at the moment, and 👍 to them for facilitating.

[@gregduncan3242]

I love these factory tours. You're answering questions that I didn't even know I wanted to ask. And the machines are fascinating in their complexity

[@RestoreTechnique]

It's insane the machines humans can build, mind boggling speed and precision at a microscopic level. I'm surprised that they cut the LED's into individual units so early in the process.

[@theSWBFman]

The speed and precision of these machines is astounding. I'm blown away by how fast they all work

[@MekazaBitrusty]

I can’t believe how much rough handling these LEDs go through before they finally end up in an anti static reel. 😄. Great video!

[@suzysheer66]

The setup for making these led's is insane! This makes me smile!

[@kudui21]

Stretching foil trick dropped my jaw... Either way mesmerizing. Who do I call when I spend 20 minutes watching, feel like it took 2 minutes and already got withdrawal syndrome?

[@theprofessordjuk]

Thank you ben Stewart for supporting on patron @4:29 i love this so much

[@rbesfe]

The simultaneous speed and precision of those machines is absolutely insane

[@JohnDuthie]

This is incredibly cool! We never get to see behind the scenes and have it explained so well. Thanks SP!

[@Олекса-я6й]

13:40 Win XP in 2023! ))) BTW, cool review of the LED manufacturing process, thnx a lot!

[@plutonianfairy]

The pick and place is awesome. So small yet so fast. Would be interesting to see a video on those.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Those arms look like scaled up harddisk head actuators. Would not be surprised if they actually were.

[@3dmedicvince449]

I can honestly say I kept getting frustrated when the ads ran as I was so enthralled in this video. It's just utterly amazing how these LEDs are made and assembled. I enjoy watching your videos so keep up the great work.

[@scuzzy19]

This generations how it's made, but way better! I absolutely love these videos!

[@tehpanda64]

The machines are absurdly cool, they could be making pencil sharpeners for all I care, the precision and speed is impressive.

[@eDoc2020]

Fun fact: the reels used for component packing are based on earlier film reels. You can take a reel of LED tape and it will mount directly to the hub of an 8mm projector.

[@dahahaka]

This was honestly even cooler to watch than the amd and intel factory tours i've seen so far, honestly, cooler than any factory tour i've seen!

[@Quantum-Entangled]

A huge thank you to you! I'm thoroughly fascinated by how advanced China is, and how nicely you present 😀

[@scottxiong5844]

Dude! I haven't seen your videos in forever. I think at one point the internet community thought you stop using the internet or something. I am so glad you are back. I really love your videos. Looking forward to more videos!

[@PlexiumGames]

When I saw those little pick and place machines my jaw literally hit the floor. I cannot, simply cannot believe that something so fast can be so accurate for so long, presumably thousand and thousands of cycles. Like those chips are so fucking small you cant even see them without a microscope! It's actual black magic.

[@Pulsarstunes]

I'm so amazed at these arms being both stupidly fast and incredibly precise. I always thought you could either be fast or precise, but not both. Thank you so much for showing this, i'm instantly subscribing.

[@alexyoung6418]

Cool. I've been using their LEDs and standalone controller ICs. Pretty neat how they work on the application level. And even cooler how they are manufactured. Thanks for sharing.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

The 2812b requires exact timing though. Any runtime delay of more than 1 millisecond will result in the strip not displaying properly. So it's important you either use PIO for transmitting data, or you have a mega stable computer/application with razor sharp timings. I recently built a matrix text scroller driven by a raspberry pi pico and had its on board PIO do the data transmission while the application starts on the next frame.

[@alexyoung6418]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 I'm on STM32, been using some of its timers in PWM generation mode powered by DMA, so precise timing isn't an issue. I can easily drive several WS2812B strips simultaneously with thousands of LEDs and have them refreshing live from a display buffer. The issue with the 2812 die is that it doesn't seem to be gamma corrected, and the 2811 chips don't seem to be able to generate pure high level or low level in DC form. There's aways a little spike regardless of the load resistance. Some of my applications don't exactly use these outputs to drive LEDs.

[@KingPfeiffer]

As a controls person seeing the amount of automation required for those machines is insane. The amount of components that need to be calibrated correctly to run 24/7 with minimal defects, mind blowing.

[@truckywuckyuwu]

I absolutely love this channel and how you take a look at tech like this, especially in the factories. Thank you for the look at things that people would never normally see.

[@theftking]

Those ultra fast machines are freakin awesome.

[@HennerZeller]

Also, they are in FlaschenTaschen :) Thanks for this tour, this is incredibly fascinating how fast these things are happening in production, and how accurate. Interesting that some of the pick-and-place machines essentially use an oversized harddisk arm.

[@ShR33k]

Incredibly fascinating to watch! Something the majority of us take for granted... a simple LED strip! I love that they have individual drivers - thats really cleaver, and the machinery at that level of detail, mind blowing!!!

[@criticaltlr1]

Fantastic video, just amazing detail and complexity involved in making LEDs, I'm interested in who makes the machines? The design of the machines is equally impressive. Interesting that the computer screens were still using windows xp!

[@soilmanted]

"StrangeParts" seems to be an apt name for this channel. I have never understood much about how light emitting diodes are manufactured. After watching this video, i feel more estranged from the processes involved than I was before.

[@OutThere458]

The LED lead frame with the over molding that you showed was super interesting. Did they tell you anything about their lead frame supplier or about their wafer fab?

[@markusallport1276]

F'ing fascinating! the speed and tech going into these everyday LED's is mind blowing. Thank you for the video.

[@ToRung]

Many more happy returns💝🥰

[@teckmenglee8060]

Simply awesome. Thanks for the in depth video.

[@soulkeephl]

Scotty says "WorldSemi" and suddenly I understand where the WS part of WS28xx LEDs comes from 😅

[@oasismike2]

Thanks! I've worked at hi-rel IC houses in the 70's & 80's, so nothing you said went over my head, and it's just so great to get this kind of access to companies making things I'm interested in!

[@Rulerofwax24]

During the last video, I was wondering how those component tape reals were made, particularly with such small components. At the end of this video I realized I got exactly my wish.

[@r3toun]

I havent caught up on your health journey (mostly bc youtube hasnt recommended it...) but im so happy to see you back at it, your videos provide incredible value and im so glad to see this one pop up

[@freddoflintstono9321]

I think it would be worth mentioning that he actually has to talk over the noise of the machines to be audible - I'm sure he has a pretty rough voice after each one of these. Fantastic effort by him and his team, especially by including low speed sections of machines that make hundreds of movements per second. I'm old enough to recall the appearance of the first SMDs (and meeting the challenge of manually soldering them as a hobbyist😋)..

[@aurizon]

Amazing high speed precision, low reject rate and a clear and excellent explanation.

[@Shoorit]

Amazing stuff.. whenever I think LED I always picture the classic type with two wires sticking out. Seeing this is amazing, the LED technology we have is crazy.. I’ve had an OLED TV for a few years and that still blows my mind how small they are.

[@tookitogo]

Manufacturing-wise, an OLED display has nothing in common with discrete LEDs. Your OLED TV is not manufactured by mounting individual LEDs, it’s basically a glass panel printed with many layers of special inks. (Super oversimplified, but the key is that it’s made as a single part, with all the individual subpixels manufactured simultaneously, just the way that all the billions of transistors in a microprocessor are made together as an integrated unit, not added one by one.) Displays made of individual LEDs do exist, as video walls. These are available with a dot pitch of as little as 0.84mm, but even that tiny pitch makes for a 145” 4K display, over 3.2m wide. Shrinking that approach down to household TV sizes is being experimented with, under the name “micro LED display”. But they haven’t been commercialized yet.

[@jimbarchuk]

It was ~30? years ago I heard a factoid that 2 machines made 90+% of all incandescent bulbs in the world. Now one guy with 20 machines make a Significant Portion of the world's LED supply.

[@kakwa]

Really fascinating how these machines manages to be both fast and delicate. Even more impressive when you realize most of these are also made in China (would love to see a video about these, specially the wafer handling ones). The only frightening stuff is how often these seems to run very old Windows versions like Windows XP or maybe even 2000 (in fairness, it's fairly common in industrial equipment) ^^.

[@Anonymous------]

@@Hamstr_Games Some factory software can do fine using DOS, Unix or Linux. The less unnecessary stuffs in the way the more reliable the software operation.

[@med4511]

It's more secure on average. And most of the time these machines are never connected to the internet, heck not even to any network.

[@ipid3125]

as always great to see you back

[@ashokkumarreddyg2982]

"Thank you Ben stewart for supporting on patreon" did anyone see that?

[@Th3James]

That was amazing. I'm watching this on a 3 CRT 1080i screen in my garage! Those machines moving was insane.

[@unlokia]

*AT LAST:* someone who isn’t a Chinese employee filming a marketing video with a camcorder from 2008, has bothered to make a DETAILED video of LED manufacturing. I commend and thank you, Sir. ❤

[@rabbitazteca23]

I was not expecting the process from beginning to end to be so rigorous and complicated. WTF, salute to these engineers!

[@BennyMack]

I'm so happy to see you have recovered from your head injury and this videos is giving me old school vibes.

[@burntalive]

So much stuff I see you cover makes me realize how much of the stuff we deal with in day to day life these days is basically black magic to anyone who lived before the 60s or 70s.

[@joesyrnichenko8156]

My mind has been blown. I never really realized how much precision was involved in this process

[@speeder172]

Your videos are so great! It is nice to see you back.

[@Cameron_the_Robot]

FINALLY, a awesome video out from SP! I Love it. Sadly the last couple of vids have been meh. But this one OH MAN! great stuff. this was a fun video to watch.

[@prerunning6086]

Shout out to the factory for letting you show all of this. Super cool! The wire bonding is like magic.

[@trilexfix]

Finally I see you wear an outfit that makes sense to being inside a factory. I always felt you looked out of place not dressed like everyone else inside a factory keep doing this it works!!

[@dunyamedia]

Just so happy to see you recovered and walking around like before!!!

[@SaccoBelmonte]

The stretching tape technique is truly fascinating.

[@markm49]

I remember seeing Sony pick and place machines around 20 years ago at the Ericsson mobile plant in Worksop, UK. I was blown away at the speed and accuracy. This though, is just unbelievable- to build machines that can do this consistently is absolutely insane.

[@not_the_pasta]

The level of automation is amazing, thank you for showing this!

[@TumbleFig]

Incredible technology at almost every stage of the process. The tiny size of those chips is amazing.

[@dsp4392]

Absolutely fascinating. These machines make my 3D printer look like an abacus. Thanks for making this!

[@walker1054]

So much clear concise info for every step. Awesome vid

[@Eisenhornk]

So glad to see you out and about doing this again