This factory manufactures about 22,000 to 25,000 USB cables per day. Moving upstairs, we get to the room currently manufacturing USB cables for multiple partner companies, including for Cooler Master’s front panel Type-C connectors. Fewer than 1% of cables fail quality inspection, and any cables that are rejected as poor quality in this factory can get fixed by the factory to minimize waste.
At this point, the machine spits the cable out and an operator quality checks the cable. The pins are fed in on what amounts to an ammo belt, then press fit onto the cable ends. The machine pulls the cable in, cuts and strips it, pulls it in again, and then presses the pinout or cable end onto the cable. As the cable is fed into the machine, it is first cut by the cutter moving left-to-right, then stripped at the cable ends so that the pins can be applied. These keep the cable tension appropriate during the cutting process. This first machine uses a reel of cabling in one giant, uncut run, then uses motorized arms that move up and down to stretch the cable as it gets pulled through the machine. At the time we visited, this machine was being used to make case front panel connectors, but the next group of machines and workers will be working on USB 3 cables. Prior to arrival here, this factory’s other location hand-makes the inner wiring of the cable and houses it, at which point it’s passed to this factory. The first machine we saw is semi-automated with human operator oversight for quality control at the end of the line. As you’ll see in this video, making a cable is more complicated than it may originally seem. This factory is located in Dongguan, China, and is where Cooler Master sends its requirements for cables made for its cases. Note that USB 3.1 is being rebranded to USB 3.2 going forward, but it’s the same process. This includes USB 3.1 Type-C, USB 2.0, and front panel connectors.
Today’s tour of SanDian, a cable factory that partners with Cooler Master, shows how cables are made. That cost is all because of how the cables are made: Raw materials have an expense, but there’s also tremendous time expense to manufacture and assemble USB 3.1 Type-C cables. For USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C connectors with fully validated speeds, the cost is about 7x as expensive as the original USB3.0 cables. USB 3.1 Type-C front panel cables are between 4x and 10x more expensive than USB2.0 front panel cables, which explains why Type-C is still somewhat rare in PC cases. Note that references to "on screen" will be referring to the video portion. This script was written for the video that's embedded below, but we have also pulled screenshots to make a written version. The factory is SanDian, used by Cooler Master (and other companies you know) to manufacture front panel connectors, USB cables, Type-C cables, and more. This is the article version of our recent tour of a cable factory in Dongguan, China.
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