Gadgetory

one of the last factories we visited on our tour in China was a company responsible for making a product that all of you end up with this Factory has millions of US dollars worth of equipment and is highly automated with human operators needed primarily to man computers reprogram machines or move it one ton reels of paper around this is a Wenli paper which is one of the cardboard factories that coolermaster and other product makers use to make the boxes that their products ship in the cardboard industry has been booming with the increase of online retail like Amazon allowing these factories to rapidly expand this video will walk through how cardboard is made by third-party suppliers for the PC component companies that we all buy from before that this video is brought to you by be quiet and it's straight power 11 series power supplies the straight power 11 PSU is shipped from 450 Watts up to a thousand watts accommodating most of the gaming PC build requirements you'd encounter and focuses on delivering a higher quality power supply that doesn't sacrifice on efficiency or stability noise is also a heavy point for the straight power 11 using a 135 millimeters silent wayne's 3 fan that can spin as low as 200 rpm for quieter low load operation learn more at the link in the description below cardboard boxes start life as a mix of synthetic materials potentially recycled materials and trees a higher concentration of nutrient the cardboard increases the cost and the quality of the cardboard and so companies often use a mix of other materials to reduce cost or having recently begun using partially recycled cardboard for their new cardboard manufacturing this factory buys its paper supply and giant spools that weigh one ton per roll the spools are stacked in the tall warehouse and moved around only by truck this Factory has a policy to keep 7,000 tons of paper in stock for its warehouse constantly just in case there's a large order influx or surge and ordering but the factory makes and sells about 10,000 tons of cardboard every single month the company also processes about 700,000 square meters of cardboard per day making it one of the highest volume suppliers in contact with our industry and one of the bigger cardboard suppliers for Coolermaster customer orders dictate the type of cardboard being made it ranges from low-quality stuff like you've probably gotten in Aliexpress orders to the high quality boxes that contain heavier cases like what the C 700 M might ship in where it's multiple layers to keep the strength when shipping a heavy box doubling the layer count costs about 20 percent more but that cost does add up quickly based on the order cardboard is loaded into a machine stretching across the entire factory floor spanning at least a couple hundred feet in length multiple rolls can be added for multi-layer cardboard manufacturing and just for reference on what the final cardboard box with printed art might cost it really depends and we don't know what cooler masters boxes cost but we know that some of the high-end GPUs and we can't say which ones shipping boxes that cost upwards of $20 us and that's cost that's not what the consumer pays so this stuff can get expensive fast particularly depending on how dense the cardboard is how many bends there are and the type of art that's applied and any additional packing materials used within today the factory is making cardboard with just three layers there's a flat top layer there's a crank old middle layer for strength notice the flutes and then there's another flat top layer or liner to start the process a driver picks up the cardboard roll and aligns it with a chain in the floor the chain slowly pulls the cardboard into the Machine and each reel is stretched across a giant slow turning roller then fed under smaller rollers to straighten and stretch the cardboard multiple of these rolls of cardboard go into the machine at a time each of which is fed through to make the multi-layer cardboard that comes out the other side after the cardboard is mounted and has begun going through the rollers the card gets heated to 110 to 120 degrees Celsius to make it easier to shape and then it's been through a corrugator wheel that creates those highly identifiable crinkles found in stiffer grade cardboard the cardboard conforms to the pattern in the surface of the wheel as it's fed through and while this is happening the flat layers or the liners are being fed through stretching wheels and aligned with the new crinkled flute piece of cardboard between other layers of cardboard are instead fed through an upstairs part of the machine which unravels the thinnest pieces of the cardboard paper into a long sheet then stretches it as it's fed into the lower chambers the paper is fed through the intersection of the machine and through several more rollers stretching the paper as it goes and eventually meeting the crinkled paper at a glueing terminal this part of the machine applies a thin layer of glue to the cardboard so that all the layers stick together the glue first applies to the roller which then rolls around and applies to the inner side of the liner it also rolls all three individual sheets toward the steamer the cardboard is next steamed at about 160 to 180 degrees Celsius with all three sheets going through the steamer and through the wheels these begin bonding together but the new concern is that any leftover water could cause microbial growth or mold to resolve this the factory feeds the newly bonded cardboard through a large oven which then dries out the moisture from the earlier steaming process the cardboard now proceeds to get cut this machinery is highly advanced and maintained regularly and is responsible for finalizing the product for the customer which would be Coolermaster or someone like that the sizes are programmed into the machine by a technician then the blades can be moved into place by the machine the cardboard is cut first long ways by a series of wheels the machine presently has about seven wheels on the equipment but only uses a few of them for this particular order some will stay raised if the current order doesn't require more granularity of the cuts but otherwise they can all be programmed through the computer located nearby after this cuts are made in the other direction at which point we have our finalized cardboard panels that make the boxes these cuts are made with a giant wheel that has a blade mounted long ways slicing the cardboard as it rolled the timing is also programs in software to make the cuts at the appropriate time to intervals to ensure that the cardboard sheets come out in the size that was specified a digital sign Hayden from the factory ceiling gives us some detail on how much carbon is being made regularly links to the automated machines the sign tells us that 1,100 meters are there abouts of the current reel remain and that there's about 20,000 meters that have been sent through this machine just today the bottom right number gives us the service area and then on the left side of the sign we see the speed reported in meters per minute the average speed and the defect rate in that order the machine was paused while we took this shot so it's current speed is zero in the close up the factory tries to keep the defect rate to around 1% and we'll pause occasionally for inspection if the defect rate exceeds that threshold as we near the end of the production line the carpet is fed onto a large elevator machine that slowly accepts cardboard one sheet at a time as it fills up the elevator lowers to accommodate more paper in the stack once full the Machine offloads its halt to a series of automated conveyor belts on two different two axes one belt offloads the cardboard onto a sort of barge with conveyer belts this then moves the cardboard in front of a giant series of fans pulling down the cardboard after the arduous journey that involves a lot of heating to ensure that everything bonded together the factory tells us that cooling the cardboard for 10 to 15 seconds will results in the strongest final material but that some customers may want a lower price and so will allow for reduced targeted cooling time to keep that price low and finally the cardboard is placed onto a pallet jack and prepared for the customers it can be turned into a box at different factories and printing happens elsewhere for any companies that have box art but today we're just looking at the brown cardboard used to contain the outer product for shipping for example from China to the US so that's it for this one it was a pretty short tour but shows you how one of the least thought of elements of a computer product is made if you find this type of content interesting or you don't and you want to find something more interesting you should subscribe to gamers Nexus you can find our other tours like of liquid cooling or of AMD heatsink assembly on the channel you can go to 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