The bare PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards), with solder paste applied in the right places, take the second step towards becoming fully-fledged motherboards here. The SMT (Surface Mount Technology) machines pick and place the tiny resistors, solid-state capacitors and other IC (Integrated Circuit) chips onto the PCB at ultra high speeds. If you look at the motherboard in your computer, some of these small components are no more than 1mm square!

Each board passes through two sets of FUJI CP742 high speed SMT machines, the 'small pick and place' and 'large pick and place' devices. Each machine in the set adds a few components, from tiny resistors up to the North and Southbridge chips. Belt fed from tape-like cartridges of components, the SMT gear places components like a machine gun, taking as little as an eighth of a second to place a component with exact precision on the PCB.

Gigabyte's SMT production lines

All chipset ICs, plus the BIOS chips and any integrated peripherals (but not their connectors) are added to the top of each motherboard-to-be during this step of the process. The PCB then passes through a Heller 1900EXL hot convection oven to fully melt and set the solder paste, securing the components in position. Motherboards that require components to be placed on the underside of the board are now flipped and sent through the solder screen printing and SMT process again.

The FUJI pick and place SMT machines mount components on each motherboard

components are fed into the SMT machines from tape-like reels

An SMT machine about to start placing components on a motherboard

Each of the 16 or so heads places a different component in as little as 1/8 of a second (flash frozen in this picture)