When you order a Kindle from Amazon or buy a Kobo from Chapters Indigo, the final product is all you know. In a hidden manufacturing world, robots and humans do all components and assembly. One of the brands we sell on Good e-Reader has provided us an inside look at the entire tooling process. You will understand how the motherboard is made, how the batteries are soldered, and how all the board’s RAM, CPU, and GPU look. You will see how the buttons are designed, such as the power or physical page turn. Users will likely get a kick out of the e-paper display, how it is a thin piece of film that is loosely attached to the screen, and a specialized robot flattens it.
Most modern e-paper displays are multiple layers of thin film. The e-paper display could be anything from Carta 12000 to Carta HD. The old generation of front-lit displays used to be LED lights positioned alongside the sides of the bezel and projected light evenly across the screen; the new generation is simply another film that does the same thing. You have another layer of plastic to protect everything underneath and either exposed e-paper or glass.
What is most interesting about our video was how e-readers are stress tested. Dozens or hundreds of e-readers sit side by side, constantly interacting with the touchscreen to test if the screen assembly is working as intended; this is how they can check battery life. If an e-reader has a power button, volume buttons or anything else, they are pressed down a few hundred times over a few days. This is done to ensure quality control and test whether the battery is attached correctly or if anything else can be considered a manufacturing defect; they can pick it up early before everything is boxed up and sent to the customer.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
