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Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

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Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#171

Post by sl1ck731 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #147
vmception wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had invested in a semiconductor factory early last decade, and it had started making bitcoin miners, it had reminding me of Zion from the Matrix because it seemed like the first time that a machine could make another machine which could immediately start earning a negotiable asset and then transacting for resources. Very surreal to think about.

There was this little game I played on Linux years ago where you played an AI trying to reach singularity status while evading detection by humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame:_Singularity Early in the game, you'd hack machines to run mechanical-turk style jobs to earn money. Later you'd build a factory to manufacture more processors... ;)

The combination of being played on a real world map and covertly growing/spreading reminds me of Plague Inc. I wonder if any inspiration came from this.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#172

Post by 6510 »

foobiekr wrote: post #146
zbrozek wrote: post #45

Lots of folks here are talking about the latency and throughput, but nobody is amazed at what the robots are doing. Plugging in cables and putting down tape is fiddly and hard. I'm super impressed that they elected to automate those things based on cost merit. Massive kudos to the manufacturing engineers who managed to pull that off.

Every discussion of highly-automated factories brings to mind this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSj6kvv7_Sg Early lights out production. The problem became obvious a little later, for NeXT, which was that these things only make sense at very high scale for products that change infrequently.

Fascinating, then the component shooting game moved to 200 000 cph (which is well over 9000) https://www.yamaha-motor-im.com/mounters/ysm40r

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#173

Post by contingencies »

falcolas wrote: post #59
zbrozek wrote: post #45

Lots of folks here are talking about the latency and throughput, but nobody is amazed at what the robots are doing. Plugging in cables and putting down tape is fiddly and hard. I'm super impressed that they elected to automate those things based on cost merit. Massive kudos to the manufacturing engineers who managed to pull that off.

> Plugging in cables and putting down tape is fiddly and hard. Really? That's fascinating to me, given how accurate pick'n'place robots are. I would have thought they required similar capabilities.

Pick 'n place are usually only XYZ fixed-envelope cartesian systems with additional part rotation about one axis. Sometimes the XY is replaced with dual rotary units (SCARA), or XYZ are replaced with delta systems. See https://www.valin.com/resources/articles/five-types-of-indus... for a good overview here. Plugging in cables requires fine and reliable gripping at two ends plus additional degrees of freedom, and a clear path through a more complex motion envelope for access. This generally necessitates a move to arms, which come with additional issues (play at extreme positions, repeatability constraints, higher cost, power and space requirements, non-square envelope, slower motion, etc.) Having two of these work together on a flexible part means very fiddly parallel control of two systems with these drawbacks. Basically it's expensive because good end effectors cost a lot, parallel control exceeds conventional industrial requirements, industrial control systems are purposefully non-standardized, sensors have to be added in an application-specific manner and subsystems prototyped as requirements are identified, and experienced talent is hard to find.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#174

Post by niea_11 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #167
Hamuko wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the packaging is done by humans.

No, it isn't. The article specifically describes the robots packaging the final product.

from the article :

Just a few humans were present to deal with a handful of tasks -- two to feed bare motherboards to the line, and two to package the finished consoles.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#175

Post by JosephRedfern »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #167
Hamuko wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the packaging is done by humans.

No, it isn't. The article specifically describes the robots packaging the final product.

It’s ambiguously worded (up to vs up to and including), but the article actually specifically describes humans packaging the final product: “Just a few humans were present to deal with a handful of tasks -- two to feed bare motherboards to the line, and two to package the finished consoles.“

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#176

Post by shmerl »

bigcheesegs wrote: post #164
shmerl wrote: post #132

When will Sony start supporting Vulkan on PS?

I seriously doubt it. The PS4 has a custom graphics API which directly creates command buffers in the GPUs native format. There's not really much of a graphics driver at all other than what's necessary to isolate the game from the OS.

Why not though? It makes it easier for developers, instead of the need to address yet another proprietary API. Simplifying things has value.

That API was created by Sony when something like Vulkan didn't exist yet, but today there is no good reason not to support Vulkan.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#177

Post by krasin »

sbierwagen wrote: post #169
411111111111111 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these boards werent consumer producs though. playstations are produced for years with no alterations.... millions of times. i.e. playstation 4 was sold ~100million times. thats most definitely at a scale where you can automate with margins.

Game console manufacturing definitely is low-mix compared to cars, but it's not like they're stamping out spoons: depending on how you count, there were something like 19 revisions to the PS3 motherboard, as Sony worked to reduce chip count and shrink PCB size: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Motherboard_Revisions

Specifically, in the context of assembly, as long as dimensions and locations of each connector stay the same, it does not really matter for the automated assembly line.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#178

Post by [deleted] »

sbierwagen wrote: post #169
411111111111111 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these boards werent consumer producs though. playstations are produced for years with no alterations.... millions of times. i.e. playstation 4 was sold ~100million times. thats most definitely at a scale where you can automate with margins.

Game console manufacturing definitely is low-mix compared to cars, but it's not like they're stamping out spoons: depending on how you count, there were something like 19 revisions to the PS3 motherboard, as Sony worked to reduce chip count and shrink PCB size: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Motherboard_Revisions

[deleted]

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#179

Post by walrus01 »

baybal2 wrote: post #114

Fully automated assembly lines rarely make sense economically even in Europe, and Japan. A "lights out" factory needs a really expensive, complex widget to make, but one which doesn't vary, or change over time much. Game consoles are exactly like: long product life times, and can be engineered specifically with automated lines in mind, without compromises. Robotic factories are by no means a final solution for manufa…

A game console is also a fairly simple thing since everything is on one fully-integrated motherboard. Boiling it down to the essence it's a robotic process of inserting an already-fabricated ready to go board into a plastic case. Or two boards if you count the 110-240VAC input power supply to DC module which is in an xbox one or PS4.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#180

Post by walrus01 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #77
actuator wrote: post #51

This looks so amazing and I wasn't aware that Playstations are still manufactured in Sony's home country itself. I guess automation helps in keeping the manufacturing cost low. Now I am intrigued about what high selling electronic devices are manufactured in their home country itself and not by the ODMs/CMs in countries with cheap labour like China.

I have a feeling that automation slowed down in many sectors when China came "online". I think this cycle is coming to an end, and there is no comparable pool of labour anywhere in the world so that fully automated factories are going to be the next step (that wasn't technically possible in the early 90s but I think we now have the technology or very close to).

> I have a feeling that automation slowed down in many sectors when China came "online".

The largest high quality AC to DC power supply manufacturers used to all be Taiwanese companies. And they manufactured in Taiwan. At some point about twenty years ago with increasing wages, benefits and cost of living in Taiwan they started looking seriously at opening factories in mainland China and other places. Delta, for instance, has a big factory in a low-wage-area of Thailand. Now instead of going for full robotic automation and continuing to make power supplies in Taiwan, most of them are made by more manual labor intensive processes in places with much lower wages.

The top ten Taiwanese x86 motherboard manufacturers also did the same.

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