Long story short, I have just two and a half hours to film this sponsored tour of the high-sense TV factory behind me.
Before my dust cover's turned to glass slippers, my head turns into the Great Pumpkin, and I get shipped back to Canada.
We've got to get through back-plane prep and assembly, backlight installation, mainboard and power supply installation,
panel mounting, QA and validation packaging, good grief!
Even miracles take a little time, and the longer we stand here, the less we're gonna have!
Ah! That's another five seconds! Let's go, go, go!
This is gonna be cool. The production line we're about to see has seven first-of-their-kind automated machines.
A third of it is assisted by AI or machine learning in some capacity, and it has a total automation rate of over 70%.
Whoa! This level of automation isn't just to save on labor costs, but also to improve quality.
These back panels being loaded onto the assembly line used to be done by squishy humans,
but as you guys might have seen in our recent video taking delivery of a high-sense,
116-inch RGB backlight TV, panel sizes have gotten kind of out of control,
which means that when you've got people lifting these backplanes, there's a significant risk of deformation.
Since they switch to this automated system that grabs them, shakes off the protective corner pieces,
then places them onto the line, they've reduced their defects by over 90%.
Next door, the backplanes are treated for any static build-up, then they're flipped over to prepare them for the next step.
Now, you probably think of major components like the panel, power supply, and processing chips as the big drivers of cost for large TVs.
But here's the thing, for televisions to be one of the only seemingly inflation-proof consumer goods,
manufacturers need to dig deeper than that.
Behind me is an automated glue dispenser that relies on an AI model to control flow rates, pressure, movement speed,
and more to apply hundreds of glue points for LED light bars, and this results in a savings of 9% on glue.
Nice. After a quick trip through the spray-gluing machine and a pass under this UV-curing lamp,
we're going to apply our LED strip and lens arrays that are going to serve as our backlight.
This is one of the few steps that is still manual, but if what we've seen so far is anything to go by, it probably won't be for long.
The glue theme that we've kind of established so far continues behind me with their automatic primer coating machine.
The backplane is going to be joined to our front panel by a foam tape to reduce light leakage,
but that requires a primer to be sprayed in order to improve adhesion.
By using machine vision to verify their coatings in real-time and an AI model to make adjustments,
they were able to reduce their primer consumption by 58% while also dramatically reducing defects.
Unfortunately, this machine is patent-pending, so if you're watching this video right away, it's going to be blurred.
But once they get their patent, we're hoping to replace that blurred footage, so come back in six months.
As TVs get bigger and bigger, maintaining efficiency and backlight uniformity are major challenges,
so behind me, HighSense is applying a reflective film to the backplane to make the absolute most out of any light from the backlight LEDs.
They're also using automated spring-loaded applicators to apply the sheet more evenly,
which reduces the risk of dark spots in the finished product.
You'll still need your diffusion layer and optical sheet, and of course, even the best processes are imperfect.
So that's where this station comes in, where they're using machine vision and AI to analyze the backlight for uniformity.
HighSense somewhat sheepishly admitted that industry norms used to be to have a person look into the backlight and go,
yeah, that looks pretty even, so it makes sense that this change resulted in a major improvement to inspection accuracy.
By the way, you might have noticed this is a white backlit TV, whereas HighSense's cutting edge is RGB backlighting.
We're going to be taking a closer look at their RGB backlight technology a little bit later in the video.
Now that our backplanes are validated, it's time to apply the foam tape that's going to seal them to the panel.
This is also automated, which HighSense boasts they are the first in the industry to do.
Now it's time for a big moment, panel assembly.
This is yet another process that has become simply impractical to do by hand with modern monstrous TV panels.
The old way involves two operators with suction cups attempting to line up the panel at the backplane and stick it down exactly the same every time.
Breakage was a real problem. This new way brings the fresh panels in on a conveyor, moves them over to an automated peel machine to remove the protective covering
that's on the back of the panel, picks them up and places them onto the backplane with better than 0.02mm precision.
Now we're looking up at those same robots that we were just in front of.
At this station, the source board gets folded up and then covered with the front plastic bezel.
Next behind me, these two robots affix the front bezel with screws.
And this is a lot cooler than you might realize. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that I was here in China being told that screws, especially little ones, were still too hard to do economically with robots.
Not anymore, and not only is it more economical, but this is apparently responsible for a 44% reduction in the defect rate at this step.
The final step for what they call module assembly is these foam rollers pressing down the panel on the backplane to secure the foam tape.
With the foam secured, the TVs are flipped onto these soft carrier pads for the rest of assembly.
Now it's time for our strawmans to get a brain or a main board with a processor and also a power supply.
You might have noticed that each of those boards only got one screw securing them to the back panel.
That is not because Hisense went to the Linus school of how to install printed circuit boards.
This is why I usually only put half the screws and radiators.
It's because the rest of them are going to be installed next door right here.
Why it made sense to divide these into two steps?
I don't know, but that doesn't matter because I don't design assembly lines.
Now next, we've got a very rare animal indeed, a manual step.
Sorry, I'm not even going to try to do the accent. The point is that they do have a robot for speaker placement, but it is currently undergoing maintenance and trials,
so they still have a person manually placing the speakers, but not for long.
Now it's time to install cable and wiring harnesses.
As you can see, this requires three people in order to keep up with the speed of the production line.
Hisense says that the handling and delicate installation of these parts is still best done by human hands,
but they are researching ways to automate this and who knows, it might not be that far off.
Now we're at the end of the lines, or are we?
For space efficiency, Hisense has the production line laid out in a U shape.
I asked Hisense if I could ride on one of the TVs to the other side and they said yes,
and then it turns out they misunderstood my question. They couldn't imagine anyone could ask something so stupid.
I tried for you guys, I tried. Next, Hisense invited me to participate in the production line.
They asked me to do the internal inspection step, so I'm supposed to mark all the various connectors and tapes and screws.
So this one, this one.
Oh, all the screws. No!
There's not enough time! Which I guess was kind of their point.
I guess that's why Hisense replaced this technology with this technology.
They're using AI and machine learning to constantly update their capabilities to detect even the smallest errors.
If an error is identified, hey, human hands are still the king, it gets fixed right next door, then the back covers get installed.
Kind of a cool element of Hisense's culture is that no matter what position you apply for, if you get a job,
you'll spend a day here on the final inspection line so that you can get an appreciation for what goes into these devices that you're marketing or selling or whatever it is you're doing.
Before heading into QA, every panel is burned in for 10 minutes on the line to help eliminate any of those first part of the bathtub curve failures.
At this point, our TV is basically assembled and it's time for QA.
This station behind me uses precision 3D machine vision and an 8-axis plug-in and plug-out robot with ultra-high precise force control in order to satisfy Hisense's customers.
They even have a robot here that can push buttons turning the TV on.
Nobody tell my wife about either of these innovations.
The rear covers get screwed on, the labels get engraved, then we're off to a particular passion of mine.
Packaging. After automated testing and validation, the TVs are brought back downstairs to be wrapped, padded, and boxed.
This is yet another area where automation is not only a huge time saver, but a huge backache saver.
Hisense estimates that the average weight of a consumer TV has reached 54 kilograms. That is well over 100 pounds.
The solution? Have the robots move them around. Way better.
What a ride, man. There's even more that we didn't get a chance to show you.
Like the system that monitors materials supply levels at the stations and then uses these autonomous vehicles to scurry over with more sprues or connectors or cardboard sleeves or whatever.
And we didn't even touch on the monitoring system that shows machine health for the entire facility in real time, advising them proactively when things might need maintenance.
I couldn't show you guys all that because they're in the process of applying for some patents, but bottom line, I think we've seen enough to know that humans were basically obsolete in a cutting edge production environment.
Let's go somewhere that we're still needed then. The R&D Center, where we can take a closer look at the RGB backlight technology in Hisense's cutting edge TVs.
I've discussed Hisense's RGB mini LED backlight technology a couple of times on this channel, both when they launched at CES and when I unpacked their 116UX at home.
But I've never gotten a chance to see under the hood.
Before we take a closer look, though, let's do a brief history of backlight technology.
Originally, backlights were designed to as evenly illuminate the back of an LCD panel as possible.
This made them nice and thin compared to old school CRTs, but they weren't the best at producing blacks.
They were really more like gray. That's because even the best LCD allows a significant amount of light to pass through.
The solution? Full array local dimming, which places many smaller lights across the entire back of the panel.
These can be brightened or dimmed in zones according to the type of content in front of them, dramatically increasing perceived contrast.
Over the years, they leveled up a lot with smaller LEDs, more numerous zones, and high energy blue backlights that can excite quantum dot films to achieve image quality that gives even self-emissive display technologies a run for their money.
But what if, instead of a single color backlight, whether it's white or blue, you could have an RGB backlight, allowing you to shine red light directly behind a red pixel for the most vibrant sports car you've ever seen?
That is where RGB mini-LED comes in.
Now, it's still early days for this technology, and there is room for it to improve, especially by adding even more zones to the backlight.
But HighSense has been on the forefront of development, and when we measured the 116UX, we were absolutely blown away by its color gamut.
Bottom line, RGB mini-LED results in incredible color saturation and unreal brightness that really makes HDR content pop.
And it's so cool to see this side-by-side with the fully assembled unit so you can really see how the image sausage is made.
All this fire scene looks so good, right?
HighSense's rise to prominence in North America has been more recent, but they've actually been around since these were current, 56 years to be precise,
and are now a major player in everything from TVs, laser TVs, and projectors to cloud services to fridges.
In fact, this was one of their early acquisitions, which they pointed out to me when we walked in, actually still works.
Ah, refreshing. They asked me to highlight their ongoing goal of becoming a world-class provider of multi-scenario display solutions and to highlight their construction of China's first zero-carbon factory.
You can learn more about HighSense in the video description. And while you're down there, hey, maybe leave a nice little comment to show your appreciation for them opening up their factory so we can all understand a little bit better where our shiny gadgets come from.
Speaking of shiny gadgets, if you want something else to watch, maybe check out my unboxing and first look at the 116UX 116-inch RGB mini-LED TV.
It is out of this world.