So, a few months ago I had the pleasure of walking through a few PSU factories.
It's not unusual for many of the factories to not allow photography, but CWT was so proud of their new facility (built in 2010), they actually encouraged me to take as many photos as necessary.
The factory is located in Guanzhou, China. Which is actually a bit unusual in itself since most factories are in Shenzhen. Personally, I find the less hectic and over-developed area of Guanzhou a pleasant break.
In this first post, I'll take you for a walk down one of the assembly lines...
In this shot, off to the left, you can see the line of people placing components on the PCB. After they're all situated, a jig, or "fixture" is used to hold everything in place. That's what you see in the below picture, albeit much later on in the assembly process (Note the modular interface and a couple ground wires already in place). After assembly, the PCB goes into a fairly modern wave soldering machine. One of these days, I should send a Go Pro through one of these.
After going through the wave soldering, the unit is flipped upside down and put in another jig where it is "cleaned" by hand. In the below picture, the young lady is trimming legs that may be too long or excess solder that might hang onto the board. This jig actually has a sliding mechanism that goes back and forth over the PCB. The mechanism is only a few millimeters over the surface, so if anything is too long, it will hit it and the worker knows it's something that needs to be trimmed.
After this, the PSU is put through some testing to make sure everything functions correctly.
After the unit passes, it's time for assembly into a housing.
Once assembled into a housing, the unit is tested again. You'll probably recognize the SM-5500/SM-220 kit up on the shelf. The PSU is clamped down to a vibration table during the load test to make sure that everything is assembled solidly and that nothing rattles loose.
More later....