External Hard Drives Frozen Shrimp Thai Rice Boxes Paper Towels
In the digital world, like the real one, it helps to have extra storage space. An external hard drive stores data separate from a computer to expand storage capacity. It also preserves memory. So in the event that the computer drive crashes, all is not lost. 50 years ago, external hard drives were the size of refrigerators. Today, they squeeze a lot more memory into drives the size of chocolate bars. On the hard-drive assembly line, there's not a speck of dust. An air-filtering system sucks particles out of the air to keep them from contaminating the drive and compromising its function. Production starts with the motor base. An employee installs a voice-coil magnet. It's one of two that will move the drive heads to write information on rotating disks. They're called voice coils because they operate on the same principle as loudspeakers. Next, a robot places one of the hard-drive disks in the motor base. A camera snaps a photo to send information to guide the robot so it positions the disk exactly. Another robot places a round, metal spacer at the center of the disk-- again, relying on the camera's eye for guidance. It sets a second disk on top of the spacer. This is a two-disk hard drive, but a drive can have several, depending on the amount of storage needed. A robot locks the disks into place with a stainless-steel clamp. This next part is a plastic ramp. The ramp is a place to park the disk-drive heads when they're not engaged in reading and writing data. Those tiny heads have been preassembled to one end of the head arm. They attach the other end of the arm to the lower voice coil in the base and then situate the second voice coil above it. To maintain its squeaky-clean interior, a robot inserts a thin cotton filter. This filter will capture dust particles in the event that some infiltrate the hard drive. A robot now places a metal cover on the other side of the drive. Another robot then screws the cover to the motor base. With the inner workings now encased, the hard drive can be moved out of the air-filtered section of the factory. A worker collects the hard-drive assemblies and slots them into a tote box. Once a circuit board has been added, they transfer the hard drives to a test chamber. Behind the closed door of the chamber, a robot swings into action. It plucks a hard drive from the tote box and plugs it into a test cell to confirm that it's functional. Outside, employees go about their daily business, as the robot methodically tests each hard drive in the tote boxes. Once a tote of drives is confirmed to be operational, the chamber ejects them and a worker then does a visual inspection of each one. She looks for scratches or other damage that could hinder its function. There's another slightly different system for testing. In this one, the employee places each drive on a conveyor that delivers it to a robot tester. Having two tester systems ensures that if one goes down, they still have another one to carry on. After all, like humans, robots are not infallible. At the packing station now, there's one last visual inspection. The employee scans the drive's serial number so its production can be traced in the event of a problem later. She then seals it in plastic. This hard drive is now ready to accept data and ensure that someone doesn't totally lose it if their computer drive crashes. People have been noshing on shrimp since the beginning of time, but it hasn't always been an easy catch. Wild stocks declined in the 20th century. Shrimp farms emerged to supply what nature couldn't. Factories process the harvest, ensuring an abundance of ready-to-eat shrimp for the freezer. Jumbo shrimp have long been big on the cocktail circuit. Today, it comes prepped and frozen, complete with cocktail sauce. Just unwrap and thaw. Shrimp cocktail is one of the many ready-to-eat dishes prepared at this factory in thailand. Fresh from the farm, the shrimp undergoes a quick cold-water rinse. It then rides a perforated conveyor. Rinse water drains through the holes in the conveyor to keep the shrimp from becoming soggy. Still cool from the icy bath, the curly crustaceans spill off the conveyor into plastic baskets. They weigh each basket and then transfer the shrimp to a larger tub. To keep the chill on, they add crushed ice between loads. A temperature of 50 degrees fahrenheit or less must be maintained throughout processing, or quality will suffer. It's now time for the inevitable-- the deheading. Using a metal tool that's like an open thimble, workers pull the heads off the shrimp with a few quick tugs. The deheading line is a long and busy one. The headless shrimp now travel to sizing rollers. The space between the rollers is narrow at first and wider further down. As the rollers spin, smaller shrimp fall through first, and the larger ones continue on to fall through further down. They accumulate in different piles on conveyors below. This separates the shrimp into five size categories. Out of the sorter, an employee samples the shrimp's temperature to confirm that it remains adequately chilled. Deheaded and sorted by size, these shrimp are now ready to come out of their shells. On the shelling line, some workers cut the tails off and others leave them on, because there's a market for both. After they peel away the shell, they cut out the digestive tract that runs along the back. It's often referred to as the vein because it looks like one. Workers on this line peel and devein 800 shrimp an hour. The shrimp then goes to different prep zones. At this one, an employee dips tail-on shrimp into an egg mixture and then dredges them in rice flour. He sends them down the line to the next worker. He rolls the floured shrimp in rice paper. As you can see, there's a bit of trick to this. He moistens the edges of the rice paper to seal the wrap. The result is a spring-roll appetizer that can be frozen until it's ready to be cooked and served. In another area, a worker prepares a breaded recipe-- again, using shrimp with the tail still on. This is finger food and, with the tails on the shrimp, will be easier to grip. He soaks it in seasonings and coats it in breadcrumbs. Then he dips it in egg batter and breads it again. The second coating of crumbs will give the shrimp extra crunch when fried. The tray is now full, and so it's over to the fry belt. After a quick trip through hot oil, the breaded shrimp is perfectly fried. All the shrimp, including this raw product, take a blustery ride through a freezer. Spread evenly across the conveyor, they freeze individually rather than in big, icy clumps. So you don't have to thaw a whole bunch to get a few shrimp. The frozen shrimp falls into weigh stations. At the correct amount, the bottom opens to release them. An ice glaze will protect them from freezer burn. These frozen-shrimp products are ready to leave the factory. From the freezer to the oven to your taste buds. With all the prep work done at the factory, these frozen-shrimp products are quite a treat. Rice is an integral part of the asian diet, so it's not surprising to find special storage vessels for it. In thailand, the traditional container is a rice box-- a covered jar handwoven from bamboo and often beautifully decorated. They're also produced as decorative items for export. Thai rice boxes started out as an ordinary household container for cooked, sticky rice. Today, they're sought-after handicrafts, produced in a range of sizes for storage of all kinds or simply for decoration. Each box is handcrafted from start to finish. The artisan begins with thin strips of bamboo. He splits the strips with his fingernail to make them the width required for the box size he's weaving. He lines up the first few strips on the floor and holds them steady with his foot as he weaves strips crosswise through them in an under-one, over-two sequence. He continues weaving this pattern until he produces a square that's large enough to form the base of the box. He sprays the base with water to soften up the bamboo. This prevents the strips from breaking when he now bends them upward to begin weaving the sides of the box. Once he's completed the sides, he begins weaving the box's neck, pulling the strips laterally in a circular direction. He alternates, folding one strip upward, one strip downward. He trims the downward strips, then inserts the ends through the woven sides. Next, pulling the strips through the middle, he fits a bamboo ring over the outside of the neck, then another along the inside of the neck, locking the remaining upward strips in between. This immobilizes the strips, eliminating any need for nails or glue. It also adds rigidity, reinforcing the neck's round shape. A quick trim of the remaining strips, and the box is fully constructed. He then makes a lid using the same materials and technique. Next, artisans coat the outside of the box and lid with a mixture of chalk, glue, and sawdust. They let the coating dry in the sun for a day or two, until the surface becomes hard and smooth like clay. Now an artist gets to work, first applying two base coats of acrylic paint. Once the base coats are dry, she places the box on a turntable and applies a coat of the background color. Once that dries, she begins outlining the design. Then she fills in the design. Once that's dry, the fine details. It's here that you see the artistry emerge. Once the artwork has dried, they encircle the neck with a band of rattan, then with strips of rattan, tie the box to a wooden stand. At the base of each corner, they weave the rattan strips into a decorative pattern. Not only is this rice box entirely handmade... The artisans never use templates, never take measurements. They do it all by eye. The inside of the box remains bare. The idea is to see the bamboo and how skillfully it's woven. It's a natural, nontoxic surface, against which it's safe to store rice. Paper towels were invented in the u.s. in the 1920s. The idea of a one-use, disposable paper cloth for cleaning and drying proved popular. And by 1931, paper towels were being mass-marketed. Today, a paper towel roll is such a staple in the kitchen that an attractive holder for it is a must. A paper towel always comes in handy to soak up a spill, clean a surface, or simply dry wet hands. The embossed pattern is not just decoration-- it actually makes the paper towel more absorbent by creating liquid-suctioning empty spaces in between the towel's two layers, called plies. This brand is made from 100% recycled fibers, primarily white paper obtained from office waste. The paper goes into a large machine called the pulper, which breaks it up into fibers, then blends those fibers with water to produce a mushy substance called pulp. A built-in filter removes all the non-paper materials, such as plastic windows from envelopes and staples. The next machine removes the ink by injecting the pulp with air. The ink detaches from the pulp fibers and clings to the air bubbles, which rise to the top and drain off. The pulp goes through a press, which, with a series of rollers, squeezes out the water. A screw conveyor then breaks up the pulp and moves it to the next station, which whitens it with a peroxide-based bleaching agent, then rinses it thoroughly with clean water. Next, and this is off limits to the camera for competitive reasons, they apply a chemical wet-strength agent, then form it into a sheet of paper nearly eight feet wide. The wet-strength agent, as the term suggests, keeps the paper towel intact when wet. Without this fortifying treatment, paper towels would be as fragile as toilet paper. After forming the paper, the machine winds it up into giant rolls. These rolls will feed the converting line, the automated stations which transform the paper into paper towels. Two rolls feed the line simultaneously, each providing one ply of the two-ply paper towel. But before the plies hit the converting line, the factory's quality-control lab analyzes samples in both the wet and dry state. The testing machine pulls both ends of the sample until it tears, measuring whether the paper meets strength specifications. On the converting line, one ply travels under an embossing roller, which presses a textured design onto the paper. Another roller then applies a thin coat of glue onto the raised portions of the pattern. The next station lays the embossed and glued ply on top of the second still-flat ply. Then a fine-tooth knife cuts the perforated lines, which will separate the individual sheets on the paper towel roll. The next machine winds 100 sheets around a cardboard tube. That's the length of one paper towel roll. A machine called the accumulator transports these logs, as they're called, to the cutting station... Where every 10 inches, a rotating circular saw slices through four logs simultaneously. This divides each log into a dozen finished paper towel rolls. The next station groups the rolls for packaging either by 6 or by 12. The packaging machine encases the group rolls in printed plastic... Then heat-seals the wrapping closed. Paper towel consumption is highest in north america, where factories produce 50 trillion rolls per year.