Introduction:

   Back in May 2008 I was lucky enough to be invited by ECS Elitegroup to take a guided factory tour of a couple of their PCB manufacturing facilities in Shenzhen, China. The trip was wrapped around the same time as Computex in Taipei, Taiwan so I hit Computex, then flew over to China to hit up the tour before flying back to the USA. We have been dealing with ECS here at Virtual-Hideout for years now and it was an honor to be invited on such an exclusive, inside look at their world class facilities. Get your passport up to date as come along with me as we tour ECS together...

When you're walking through two different factories in one day and snapping off about 400 pictures of dozens of machines, it's really hard to remember what the heck was what! However I'll try my best to guide you along.

In the first half of this article, we'll be exploring the creation of a world class PCB from beginning to end. In the second half of this article, we'll be exploring the process of assembling those PCB's into world class retail and OEM motherboards to be shipped around the world to dozens of the worlds most famous name brands. of course, I'm not allowed to tell you who, but I guarantee you've heard of most of them on a daily basis. Ok, on to the arrival at the PCB Factory.

   Of course as mother nature would have it, it was pouring rain for both days we were in China so here's a nice shiny picture through the wet bus window as we arrived  *sigh*.

The ECS Greeting as we arrived.

   As we departed the bus and made our way into the lobby of the PCB manufacturing building, we were greeted like celebrities. Being from the USA myself, I've never had such a greeting so I felt very honored and appreciated right off the get go. We were ushered directly to a conference room setup with drinks, a snack, an information packet and even a gift at our desks. Very nice indeed. We then got a slideshow and verbal presentation from a couple of the local ECS managers of various divisions and their PR rep. On the next page, we'll learn more about ECS.

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