Factory Visits! GarrBotics

It has only been a 4 days in China, and Huan has already set up a factory visit!   Huan’s fiance’s father’s has 3 cousins (who are siblings), each of whom owns his own factory.  All three brothers were originally factory workers themselves, and saved up enough money to buy some equipment and start producing things on their own.   The trip to the factory was about ~1.5 hours, but it was well worth it.

The first factory we visited was the youngest brother, who had started his factory first.  We talked to the youngest brother for a long time about his capabilities, and about how we could work with him to develop a prototype.  He seemed very interested in working with us, since he makes mostly car parts, and wants to branch into higher tech parts.  Discussing business with him was exciting, but it was also really cool to see how the factory works.

Since making a mold is ~50,000 (I’ve been quoted that price in RMB and USD, so obviously it varies a lot)  you start out by milling a prototype out of plastic/metal, and making sure that is exactly what you want before going to the final version.   Once you have the final version, they have a machine that makes the mold directly from the cad file.  The mold is then used in the injection molding machine (see pics), where plastic or metal is squirted in, and hardens.  Then some guy just grabs it out, and chuck it into a pile, which goes to some other folks who de-burr it and clean it up.   It was Sunday, so the factory was not at full operation, but a number of people were still working, so I got to see the injection molding machine, as well as the de-burring process.

Here is a video of the worker running the injection molding machine:

Factory #2

The next factory we visited was a screw factory.  It seems pretty straightforward, but there are some very interesting processes that go into making screws that I never really thought about.  The metal for screws comes in big rolls of round extruded steel (or other metal).  It is then cut and pressed to make the head.  Then the indentation is made in the head, and the ridges are cut.  Finally, the end is tapered in needed, and then the screw is electroplated, for that nice shiny finish.  The whole process takes 4-5 machines, and only takes two people to run!

The third  factory we vistited also did injection molding.  It was a bit bigger, and newer, but was doing very similiar practices. One cool thing was that we got to see an injection molding machine that was being installed.  There was a large amount of unused space in the factory, which surprised me given how space is at such a premium in china.

After seeing the three factories,we went to the first brother’s house, which he designed, and on which he was finishing construction.  The place had three stories, and he designed the first two floors to act as an assembly area.  His involvement in low level operation is impressive – even though he now manages ~100 people, he still plays a very personal role in production.

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