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product shortages have become an unavoidable fact of life and whether

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it's toilet paper or Playstation 5es it raises the question if you don't have

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enough stock why don't you just build more of them except in this case I'm not

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just mad about waiting 6 months from my AMD framework laptop I've got a

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significant personal investment riding on the answer to that question and since

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I happen to be in the neighborhood anyway I think it's time to pay them a

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little visit and find out what the heck is going on

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on this says it's a Bicycle Club did I

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just get played no like any design firm framework

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works with manufacturing Partners to build their products and I am so excited

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to be here today compow is one of the largest odm laptop manufacturers in the

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world and they were gracious enough to allow us on the production floor on

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extremely short notice to shed some light on how laptop production works for

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a small startup partner like framework

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and to shed some light on our sponsor cable mod it's like a mod for your

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cables because that is exactly what it is upgrade your GPU Cable Management

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with our 12volt high power angled adapters learn more at the end of the

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video the Journey Begins in the boardroom and I mean that in more ways

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than one when we arrived framework was literally in the middle of a meeting to

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negotiate an increase in production capacity but as you guys are about to

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see Partnerships are hard work and this process isn't as simple as sure let's

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just build some more who's going to be responsible for paying for the new line

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who's going to get cut to make room on the production floor and where are all

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the extra materials going to come from assuming they can answer all of those

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questions framework will be adding more lines like the ones I'm standing on

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right now this spot looks good can we add more

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here what yeah obviously it's not as simple as Hing more production lines

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let's take a look at why there are two different types of lines we'll be

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looking at today this side is a subassembly line where framework

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prebuilds the assemblies that will be used to integrate into finished machines

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and we've got something really exciting to show you here this is currently

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running a DVT one or design verification

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one run of trackpads for the upcoming framework laptop 16 now I showed you

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that machine already but the one you saw on the channel was a very early sample

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with components from the stage before called EVT or engineering validation

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stage that one would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to build which come

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to think of it explains why Nar Rob was so squirely about me handling it anyway

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the reason it cost so much is because there's practically no tooling which is

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the fixtures molds and equipment that are needed to enable mass production so

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nearly every piece of that machine was handbuilt by engineers and specialist

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contractors due to the cost you would typically build only a few dozen main

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boards and a handful of enclosures at that stage coming back to DVT though

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mass production tooling is used to ramp things up significantly and right now

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they're in the process of building hundreds of pre-production framework

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laptop 16s now these are still very

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expensive several times the cost of a production unit due to the expensive

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engineering labor and and the immature production processes but this is so

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important because it helps identify areas where both quality and efficiency

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can be improved for example the keyboard cover assembly requires 80 screws all

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perfectly torqued even though a human worker could do that that's really not

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reasonable is it so they made a major investment into two of these automatic

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screwing machines which I've been told as long as I wear these gloves I get to

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play with

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whoa okay that's

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cool in mass production this would apparently run much faster than it is

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right now and what you guys got to understand here is nothing about this

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process is by accident it might seem like it's putting screws in random

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locations but every part of the

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manufacturing process is agonized over to make it as reliable and efficient as

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possible with that said I mean it's not the screwdriver I would have built you

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can find that one on LTT Store.com in all seriousness this saves them from

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needing different processes and production lines for DIY and pre-built

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and it increases quality assurance we're going to take a look at that later first

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what's this pile I'm sitting on here the main store room is in a high security

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area on another floor I'm not allowed to show you that but this is still

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thousands of dollars worth of components for the day's production they get carded

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here then over to the kitting stations where all of the components for each

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machine like the screen assembly and the motherboard are serialized and organized

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into a tray that follows the laptop down the assembly line to keep everything

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within Arms Reach for the workers the reasons for this serialization are

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twofold first is traceability let's say

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your customer start to report a string of SSD failures if you have that

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information it can be the difference between the s SD manufacturer footing

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the bill for their faulty product or you having to swallow that pill yourself

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because they blame your process second because of their modular design

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framework has a lot of SKS for their size that means that compared to say an

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apple who might have a permanent assembly line for each product framework

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needs to be agile and this way they can swap their assembly lines between

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products as needed look at all the

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motherboards now things really get going the first step is to install the thermal

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assembly on the motherboard then take the entire thing and put it into the

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bottom housing they use a special ionizing fan to reduce ESD since the

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main board is right there and you really don't want that dying and then at the

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next station they screw in the SSD and add RAM all of the processes are

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outlined on these sop or standard operating procedure sheets that are hung

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at each individual station next the main board and Battery get screwed into place

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then right behind me the entire LCD assembly which already includes the

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hinge is screwed in and plugged in there's a couple of things that are

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noteworthy here first of all this jig is kind of cool during the DVT stage they

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determined that this was exactly the optimal angle for this installation and

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there's all kinds of little details like that that we're going to see throughout

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the line and second you'll probably note that all of the workers are wearing ESD

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ankle straps but actually wearing them unlike what I used to say in all of my

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PC build videos where I was not actually wearing

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them something that didn't get caught in DVT for the framework laptop 13 is the

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little bracket that holds the antennas onto the Wi-Fi card and there's a reason

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for that you see trained operators have no problem with picky installations like

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the old one used to be but customers had

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a heck of a time with it so they redesigned the bracket to hold the

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antennas onto the Wi-Fi card then installed together rather than have it

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so you have to hold the whole thing together and screw it down hey there we go next comes the input cover so this

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varies wildly depending on which keyboard you get what is it nine

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languages now more more than nine languages so we have nine countries that

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we're in but there's actually more languages than countries and we have a

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few of the keyboards available for countries we're going to be shipping in soon so it's literally we're adding a

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few new keyboards every quarter at this point ah anywh who there's this fancy

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acrylic fixture that helps ensure that the screws and the driver are straight

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and to help prevent the screwdriver from accidentally scratching any of the metal

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Parts this might seem a little bit confusing because we put the keyboard on

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the top then we flip it over to screw it in but that's how the framework laptop

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works and that's basically it finished laptops so then why is there still so

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much ahead of us on the assembly line ah quality control starting with stru or

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what they would call inprocess Quality Control this this is a visual QA station

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where they'll uh find things like oh where'd it go this one come on andtie

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see this little guy right here they'll use a DOT gauge on that to determine

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whether it should be considered a pass and is acceptable to send to a customer

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or whether it's a fail which raises some interesting questions given that

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framework is positioning themselves as an environmentally conscious brand does

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it really make sense to throw this whole assembly away over that tiny dot it's a

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tough question to answer because obvious viously they don't want to do that but

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from a customer standpoint do you want to be the one with the blemish or the

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one with the scratch I asked them if they've considered doing something like

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a like a fail book where there's you know little scratches and you get a

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slight discount and they said yeah they' love to be able to take pictures and

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price and list those things in the future but for now this kind of thing is

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pretty rare and the better approach is to improve the process and handling to

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ensure they get as little waste as possible then it's time for software I

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have no idea if this song is going to get us dmca but apparently they do a

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media test on it um but not until the

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test program has been loaded on the laptops using these cool test harness

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like type-c dongles that I mean because their framework laptops end up sticking

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into the laptop under the side there then we move into the function tests

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where everything type- C wireless Bluetooth every Hardware function of the

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laptop gets tested and their software will check the serial

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number of the laptop and ensure that all the correct things are inside it now

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they're ready to ship right nope just kidding first they go into these fancy

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little protective padded bags and then they go into burning land where they'll

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sit for anywhere from 10 to 12 hours at

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the beginning of production and then maybe 4 to six hours after you've

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shipped thousands and thousands of units and you have a pretty good idea of what

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you're working with also at this stage they get the latest firmware flashed and

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the OS loaded including the latest drivers then we move to the funniest

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station this only applies to DIY Frameworks but um they take everything

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that all the people over there just did and Undo It Yep they're taking them

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apart so that you can build it yourself at home cool now because they're doing

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DIY production right now this next stage wouldn't happen because um it wouldn't

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have a keyboard but this is the AI test or automatic

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Optical inspection test to ensure that the keyboard is in the right language

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for the order and maybe more importantly

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that there are no errors in the legend I asked about this and yes the step of

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verifying that the legend is correct does exist because there have been times

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when it wasn't and the reality of it is that you can't have the operator check

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to make sure all the keys are in the right place because even if they did

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speak the language I mean it be an easy thing to miss there are a few more

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stations that the machines pass through before shipping they wipe down the

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screen add certification labels and that sort of stuff but I actually think this

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non-descript green rack is a little bit more interesting framework targets a

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first run yield of in the high 90% range

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but obviously High 90% would still mean

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that a few per of the units are coming off the line not in a shippable state

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that's what you're looking at right here but but these will be inspected and

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assuming that they pass individually will go back into the line giving

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framework what they say is a nearly 100%

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overall yield which is pretty awesome

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that Target is really well aligned with framework's philosophy though not all of

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them are necessarily anything to do with sustainability for example they were

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willing to tell us that this line currently targets anywhere from 35 to 50

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units per hour that means what about 35

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to 40 seconds per station or something like that man that is really cool and it

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can be scaled this is just one line it could be two lines or a 100 lines I mean

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a girl can dream right they won't tell me exactly how many lines they have

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because then I could pretty much calculate the revenue on my phone which

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for some reason I'm not allowed to know even though I'm an investor I guess that makes perfect sense uh anyway it's time

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for us to do something really fun now narv and I are going to be picking five

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random framework laptops off of the line here and we're going to be signing them

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if you get one and you send us a picture

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how on Earth are they going to do that you know what we're going to have details in the description we are going

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to send you a framework shirt and an LTT screwdriver wait why am I doing a

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screwdriver that cost so much more the shirts on my shirt really high quality

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heavy weight cotton all right fine let's

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do it and I can just sign them anywhere right yeah screen battery any of the

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sensitive components feel free yeah okay how about here probably right

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there

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fine these are DIYs right so these are all DIYs they could go to any of the

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countries we're shipping in no keyboard already Associated all right so it's

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going to be completely random guys it's kind of ironic that you guys don't ship

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in Taiwan where you're producing these things we are opening ordering soon

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really oh actually specifically for that reason I mean Taiwan is an important

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market for PCs but also it's ridiculous that we're building them here and not

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selling yeah okay cool good job I think

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the last thing is to write a little message in

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193
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195
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196
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199
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mm from your graphics card while the 180° adapter protrudes 15.4 mm these

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below if you guys enjoyed this video you might enjoy the one where I build a

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framework laptop on the computech show floor under the watchful eye of narv who

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says I did a great job without the instructions I I did say that I I don't

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think you did I don't think I did no