Case Study | Demystifying how Chinese factories produce chargers？

The mobile phone charger is the most common product in our daily life, and it is also a product that every electronic product operator will purchase. So how is the charger produced? Let’s take a look at the production process of the charger.

1. Make PCBA:

① PCB production: PCB is an important electronic component, a support for electronic components, and a carrier for electrical connection of electronic components. Because it is made by electronic printing, it is called a “printed” circuit board;

②SMT (SMT): SMT mounter installs chips, resistors, capacitors, inductors and other components on the PCB in order;

③Plug-in (DIP): The PCB is pasted, and the plug-in is pulled up to perform the plug-in process. DIP will be subdivided into the plug-in, pressing, immersion tin, and other processes;

④Post soldering (repair soldering): After the plug-in is pulled up, the circuit board after tin immersion, and some electronic components have not been tinned well, at this time, post soldering is needed to solve it;

⑤Test: Pass the production of supporting test tools. Test the bare board. If there is no problem with the test, proceed to the next process. If the test fails, repair it to the repairman.

2. Making car charger shell

①Producing the shell: through the shell mold, the raw material is injection molded.

②Printing logo: After injection molding, the plastic parts are sprayed with oil. After spraying, they need to be baked. After the paint is dry, screen printing and bronzing are performed.

3. Assembly: The charger is mainly composed of a shell and PCBA. After preparation, assemble the housing and PCBA together.

a. Wire bonding: Weld the DC wire to the bare board. Solder the AC wire to the lower metal part of the shell.

b. Gluing: Gluing the components that are easy to fall off and break during transportation. Pass through solder joints with transformers, filters, AC lines and DC lines, etc.

c. Install the shell: close the shell of the switching power supply adapter.

d. Test: Test whether each output performance meets the standard through a computer comprehensive tester. If it does not pass, hand it over to the repairman to fix it on site. Test again until it passes the test.

e. Repair: repair the switching power adapter that fails the test.

f. Screwing: Fix the shell well.

h. Aging test: transfer the screwed products to the aging workshop for aging test. After a certain period of aging test. Then transfer back to the assembly to do the final full inspection QC test.

i. Test: The last full inspection is to perform a full inspection on the product after the aging test. If it fails, send it back to e. for repair. After the test is passed, the next process will proceed.

4. Production packaging materials:

①Product packaging materials: tape, color card, color box, manual, blister, etc.

②Carton: production of packaging cartons and printing of box marks

5. Packaging:

①Pack the finished products according to customer requirements

②Labeling: stick barcodes and price stickers on products according to customer requirements.

③Packing: Pack the products into cartons according to the packing specifications, and pack them for easy transportation

Buyers think that after placing an order, the factory will execute your order from the production of PCBA and product shell according to the above process, so the factory needs a long delivery time to deliver. In fact, after receiving the order, the factory will not be responsible for the entire process from PCBA production to packaging. Most factories will only be responsible for some of these links, and other links will be outsourced to other suppliers.

The size of the factory determines the production links the factory is responsible for:

After receiving an order, a small factory is usually only responsible for a small part of the production process (assembly + testing + packaging). The other links (PCBA production, shell production, packaging material production) are all outsourcing, which refers to purchasing from factories that specialize in this part.

How to distinguish the difference between a large factory and a small factory?

The medium-sized factories are usually responsible for themselves: producing the shell + LOGO printing + processing PCB into PCBA + assembly + testing + packaging.

Outsourcing: PCB, packaging materials, fuel injection

Large factories are responsible for their own core steps: shell production + LOGO printing + PCBA production + assembly + testing + packaging.

Unimportant parts are usually made by a partner factory or small factory: packaging materials + fuel injection

Therefore, when purchasing in China, you must evaluate the factory based on your actual situation and choose the most suitable supplier.

If you don’t know the suppliers in China or want to save more costs, please contact us.