As we mentioned, Biloda belongs to ECS Group and manufactures the printed circuit board (PCB) used on ECS and PCChips motherboards. It is located in another city in ShenZhen province, called Bao An. Its production capacity is of more than 1.8 million square feet (168,000 square meters) of PCB per month. For you to understand what this number means, a ATX motherboard measures 11.7” x 10.9” (30 cm x 28 cm), having 130.20 square inches (840 square centimeters) or 0.904 square feet (0.084 square meters). With a production capacity of 1.8 million square feet it is possible to manufacture up to 2 million of printed circuit boards using ATX size, or more than that if the PCB to be manufactured is smaller.
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Figure 23: Biloda, PCB factory from ECS.
The PCB manufacturing process is divided into several steps. We’ll show you the main steps that we could look closer during our visit.
On Figure 24 we see the drilling step. The boards, initially all covered with copper, are drilled according to the project. In the middle you see the copper boards before being drilled. The machines you see on this picture are the drillers.
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Figure 24: Drilling process.
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Figure 25: Copper board before being drilled.
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Figure 26: Machine drilling the copper board. An aluminum foil protects the board.
After being drilled, the boards are cleaned by an employee (see Figure 27).
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Figure 27: Board being cleaned after drilling process.
