Discover How Enphase Microinverters Are Made

- Hi, I'm Larry with the Solar Energy Channel and today we're in Arlington, Texas for an exclusive inside. Look at how Enphase microinverters are made. Come. Let's take a look. So we are here at the Enphase Manufacturing Facility Facility in Arlington, Texas. See the machines here in the background? This is Miguel. Miguel is the manufacturing engineering manager here at the facility. Tell me a little bit about your background, your history, where you come from. Okay.

- I have had 25 years manufacturing industry, mostly in semi, semi electronic conductors and electronic manufacturing. Like this started with MASE in February of 2023. So one year ago a company basically curating microinverters. Always wanted to work in the green environment, solar industry kind of thing. And with the IRAs Inflation Reduction Act coming into place, emphasis being able to put manufacturing facilities in the us. So actually bringing work and jobs back into the US now was very attractive to me. The more I research the company and what they do, microinverters are the way to go in the solar industry from in my point of view. And we have a 25 year warranty for all of our products. In terms of manufacturing, that means our quality has to be pretty much second to none and we have to run our machinery lines to a incredibly high yield percentage, which is a really good challenge to have. So that's the reason why I started working with them Face here. Yeah, the site, we took ownership of it in January of 2023. It's 185,000 square feet and it was literally a green site, just big open spaces when we had to set it up the way that we wanted. It's good, exciting and challenging. At the same time. We create, we, we got our first line running in about three months, produced for manufacturing two months after that. Line two went in August of last year. Produced for manufacturing in November and we're currently working on line three now. The idea is to end up with seven manufacturing lines for Microinverters and then other lines for batteries, control units, and other things that Amfa does as well.

- Wow, wow. Impressive. So talk a little bit about how many people are here at the facility now and how many workers you'll have here eventually in the future.

- Okay, so right now Enphase, we have 14 people and our control manufacturer partner, the name is Salcomp, they have right now 380 people working on the site. Wow. As we double our site and everything else, the objective is to have 750 to 800 people running on the site. We will work 24 7, so we run three eight hour shifts. We work six days a week. We keep Sundays open for preventive maintenance and things of that nature.

- Wow. Wow. So one of the things you mentioned that attracted you to Enphase is just their focus on quality. So talk a little bit about how that works. How do you know that none of your units going out to the field are defective? What, what does that look like? What kind of percentages are you look

- Looking at? Okay, so our target yield will be at once we are fully running with everything settled down, 99.8%. So that means we have a 0.02 yield percentage, which in the great big scale of things means one board a day. So we can have one board scrap a day. The target is to run 10,000 units a day. Right now we're running at about, this is per line by the way. So when we have two lines running, it'll be 20,000 units a day. We are running at about 6,000 units per line right now. So literally doubling that while controlling the quality that we do on each station. So as we going to see later, we do have a lot of different inspection stations after everything that we do to make sure that that particular process was done the right way and that the board is ready to move on to the next stage.

- So your goal is to have much less than 1% scrap rate here, but if you find that that issue here, you're scrapping that board and it's not getting, it's not even getting out to the field. Correct.

- We do not rework. So if anything goes wrong and the board has to be scrapped or sorry, no has to be scrapped, if anything goes wrong and the board has to be retouched or whatever, we will not do that. We will investigate it to figure it out what happened so we can implement corrective action so it doesn't happen again, but that board will be scrapped out or left for training purposes later.

- Okay. Now what are the types of things that might stop the line? So obviously if you have a machine that breaks down, that's something that might stop it. What about quality? What if, what if you're ready to ramp up and your quality guys say, hang on, we have an issue, we gotta stop. Yeah, I can decide what to do.

- Yeah, so we have two quality people on, on site, which literally help me run these lines and they have the final word as to whether we can go ahead and manufacturing manufacture or not. It can be things of, for example, component tolerances could be wider than we were expecting. We might expect in 10% we get 20%. That means it's a little bit wider. So we have to go through a process to see if we're allow to use that component. If we're not, we stop, we send it back and we get rep replacements as soon as we can. It can be cosmetic things that, for example, the label not being straight once it's placed onto the unit, if they, they think the unit is looking a little bit skewed, we are not allowed to use a line and again, they can stop the line for us to make sure that we get everything the way that it should be. So yeah, they have the final say as to whether we are able to manufacture

- So they can stop the process. Correct if there's a quality issue because you don't want any of that getting out the field. Now one final question here before we hit the line. You, you mentioned a little bit about sending micro inverters somewhere else to go through like a thermal cycling heating and colon cycling. How many micro inverters do you send and what's your target for how many years do you want a micro inverter to last in the field?

- Right, so what we do at the moment, because the line is coming up, every 1000 units that we build, we send two to this chamber is called an ongoing reliability test. So ORT and what they do, like you mentioned here, they, they put heat and cold and they run, its recycles, right? And we send two of every thousand that we build. We are currently building about eight to 10,000 a day. So we're sending 16 to 20 units a day. Two California's in California in Petaluma where they do this test. We check every morning to make sure that these tests are clean. That is no heart failures or anything like that. The second we see if there ever is a failure, we actually fortunately have not seen one from this site yet. Wow. If there is a failure on shows up on that report, we will stop the line while we investigate what is going on to make sure that whatever happened there does not happen again. And then once we understand what the failure is and we actually work with r and d group in California and in New Zealand to help us figure this out, we will go and review 500 units before and 500 units after that one that failed to make sure that that was in fact an isolated incident. If it is due to manufacturing, if it is because of something else, we don't do that.

- Yeah. And how many years, what's, what's your goal for how many years it lasts that test? So

- The MASE warranty is 25 years. The test actually runs up to 50.

- Wow. So what I'm hearing is quality, quality, quality

- Away to the process. That is the main driver of Enphase when I was, when I came into the team to do that, that's what was driven into us through our training in our preparation is quality has to be your, your main focus. So that's, that's what we look for.

- Yes. So your goal is to get less than 1% scrap rate and if you need to scrap it, you scrap it. Those don't get out to the field. Correct. And your goal is that every micro inverter that gets out into the field can last up to 50 years and you have a 25 year warranty. Correct? Yep. Impressive. So quality American jobs, let's go check out the line. So before we go to the line behind us, Miguel's gonna show us a little bit about how the printed circuit board goes through the whole process in the manufacturing process.

- Okay. So we start with a printed circuit board, which is literally a board where all the components are going to be placed to create the micro inverter. The first thing that we do on the process is we print a QR code and a serial number that allows us to trace this board and this particular unit all the way through the production cycle. Even when you guys get them out in the field and you place them underneath the solar panel, we can tell by that QR code and that sort serial number, if anything ever goes wrong, we can, you can go back and take a look and see which factory, which site, which date. Wow. Everything down to the second where that board was manufactured.

- And you're tracking that in the manufacturing process even before it's put together? Correct. So the board you're tracking in case there's something wrong in the manufacturing process, so you know where that board is correct? In the line? Yep. Correct.

- Traceability is very important for us because of the quality aspect of what we do. Wow. The first stage is surface mount technology, which is these black components and chips that you see here. This capacitor resist inductors and the ics and with surface mount, as it says in the name is surface mounted. So it's literally on inserted, there is no hole. We just push it through onto solve the base that we have placed there before from that stage. Then we go into what we call automated insertion placement, which we put into place these big components and actually do have holes and leads and legs and they go through the board themselves. Everything you see on this board here is done by machine except the pole head. This pole head here is done manually and that is the only manual stage on the whole line. Everything else is auto automatic. Once we have the PCP ready, we are running through some tests, we're gonna see that later. So we check, make sure the circuitry has been assembled the right way and that the functionality of the printed circuit board is working the way that it should. Once we know that is the case, then we put it into the mechanical case. We going to mechanical assembly, we start with the bottom case of whatever microinverter we're using and we put these metal dissipator into the case. And these are guided by plastic pins and once they're in place the pins get melted down so the the spreaders do not move around. We do the same with the PCBA.

- And what's the purpose of these?

- So you can see one here that's been put in place. So this is actually a heat dissipator. So when it gets super hot underneath the solar panel, this allows extra dissipation of heat as well. The materials that you seeing here is called Tim thermal imaging material and it's the same thing. It's literally helping us on areas of the board where we know could be heat affected. We are allowing to dissipate that so it doesn't become an issue. Okay.

- So long for the longevity of the micron, but you gotta get that heat out. Yep. Correct. Got

- Perfect. Cool. That's right. Yep. So on the bottom case we have the dissipator in there and then we place the PCV, same deal. We have pins that got it into place, we melt those pins down so the board is solid and it's not moving inside the plastic case. So now we have the bottom mechanical case ready, ready for the top, We put the top on it and then the next stage is called puting. What we do to protect the circuit from heat, cold, seismic activity, things like that, you know, shaking and all that stuff, we actually inject it with silicone adhesive. So we put a needle through here, we are going to see that later on. We over inject to make sure that we filling up the full cavity. We have this reservoir up here because we actually over injected on purpose, we want it to come up. Okay. So we know that it's full one that is done, it goes through an oven and it cures and one that is finished. This is what it looks like. We took the top of the case off. So we have the PCVA in there. So the actual printer circuit assembly inside with the dissipating heat, plastic, sorry, dissipating plate and then all the puting material around it that is protecting the board inside the unit.

- And that potting material keeps water out or is it more just to hold everything together?

- It's just to hold everything together and protect the p the the actual printed circuit board. Okay. The case itself is hermetically sealed, FEMA six compliant. Yep. So nothing should get in and out.

- Nothing's getting in there. Correct. So that's just to hold everything in place. Correct.

- Remember that it's gonna sit on your roof for minimum 25 years, 50

- Years

- Maybe. So we have to make sure that it's gonna last that long. Right. Yeah. And then finally what we do, we place two plastic caps on the halts where we put the the unit and we ultrasonic weld them. The second we do that, the unit becomes herma, hermetically sealed, FEMA six compliant, and then we put the bracket that you guys know that you hook onto the solar panel. We screw them in place, pack 'em and send them out to the field.

- So when these caps are in place, you can no longer just take it apart. Correct. If you want to take it apart, you're cutting it, we

- Have to cut it, we have to use source, we have to use robot,

- Whatever we have to. So at that point it's just as just as strong as if it was one whole piece. Yep. Correct. Wow. So we're here at the beginning of the line. So start us off what, what's the first process here?

- So the first process that we do is we get packets with 25 panels and these panels are actually two micro inverters each. We're working double here. We take them off the protective casing and it goes into a feeder which is gonna feed one panel at a time. So we can laser edge and print the QR code and the serial number.

- And again we need that. So you can track the board the whole way through the manufacturing process? Correct.

- Once the board gets printed, it comes through the conveyor belt and it will come in into this station here, which is the solar paste inspection. This is the first step on the surface land technology. What we are doing here is through the use of a squeegee and a stencil with actually putting solar paste on the board where we're going to be placing the components as we go down the system.

- So this is putting the paste on so that it's ready to accept the surface mounted components?

- That is correct, yes. So they just apply the paste on and now it's going to squeegee through the stencil.

- So right there that paste goes across the top and pushes down through the stencil various parts of

- The board. Correct. And it sits on the pads that require it? That is correct. Then from there the board comes out, the board here is ready to go and then we talked about quality is very important to us. So this is the first check that we do is say, saw the pasting inspection check, we checking the volume is the right volume, that it went onto the right paths and that the size of the actual kind of like geometry of it is what we want to do for when we place the components on it. It's going to sit nice and steady and stable for the rest of the process.

- So we've only done one process and we're already checking the quality.

- Correct. Yeah. This surface mag technology, we check check at every stage right here what we have is a surface mag machine and this is placing the components, different stations place different components building up the board as we go down the

- Line. So these reels all have various components that are going in and landing on the board at at their particular place? Correct.

- So this first section is capacitors, resistors, inductors, and then when we get to the bigger reels at the end, those are the actual integrated circuits, the ics that have the brain that make it into an product, it will come out of the machine and it will go into the next inspection. It say call an A OI. It's an automated optical inspection. So what this is doing is checking the board several parts of the board at different times, making sure that all the components have been placed and they have been placed the right way, that nothing is has shifted or going into the wrong path or is standing up or anything like that. Just making sure that this unit has been manufactured the way that it should have been.

- So it's a machine that's actually looking at the board where all these parts have been placed and making sure that every part is in the exact spot that it needs to be. That is correct. Before it moves on? Yep. Wow.

- Once we get to this point here, we know we surface mounted the machine, the the board and is ready to go. So the pace is still a little bit soft. So we are going to cure it in a reef refill oven it just goes through and it's literally baking it as it comes through the oven. Once it comes out of the oven, the solar place has hardened. So we do another check to make sure that everything is where it should be, that it has actually hardened in the right position, that it hasn't turned or shifted or skewed so that everything is working the way that it should. So

- This the same visual process is down there

- Or similar? They all, they all automated processes to make sure that the previous stages have been done the correct way. So you, like I said, we're very serious of our quality, so yes.

- So you look at it and check it, make sure everything's correct before you heat it after it's heated, you check it again just to make sure that nothing shifted during that heating process. That

- Is correct. Yeah. Wow. Yep. Then from here we go into these magazines from, we hold boards so we can use as we need to done done the process. This machine here, what is us? It takes the double panels and it cuts them into a single unit right there double, so, so you can see the double panel is right there. It will putting into the nest at the back and a laser cutter we go through and it will cut them into singles and as you can see over here the single board comes out.

- So this is enough board that's, that's actually two micron verb boards there? Correct. And it's just separating them. So you have singles here?

- That is correct, yeah. At this stage here we are gonna place them into pallets of four that we're going to be using during the automated placement side of it. So you can switch through the window there, a pallet will turn up, there it is. And then we're gonna place four boards on that pallet that will then come through the rest of the process.

- So at this point the surface mounted items are on the board and now we're going to the next step, which are the items that go actually go through the board. Correct?

- Yeah. Now, now we are gonna do insurgent out there. We were doing on surgeon. Correct. As you see, we have different type of components and different types. The vendors can send to us in boxes, in reels and on trays. So different things that we can use. The machines can actually be modified to take whatever is that we need to, if you look into the machine there you can see the pallet of four and then the hedge will be picking up and placing components as we go along. The idea is to have the flow nice and steady all the way through.

- So again, there's items on reels. The you, you get the, the products in reels, you set 'em here and then the machine unrolls it and puts it on the board at the first

- Places. Correct. The machine actually custom to the right size as well. Ah, okay. And venting to the right bend

- Also. Okay. Because you don't want it going through the board too far. Correct. Or not far enough. Yep.

- We also have reel apart from reels, we have trays, we have bowls like shaking, breaking bowls, different other things that we can use. So once it works through the seven stations in here, we are going to see that pallet coming out through coming to the final station.

- Yep. There it comes. So

- Here it comes.

- So

- In this station we are going to be placed into a transformer. There's four micro inverters, so there's gonna be four placements and this is the only station in the whole line when we are going to see human interaction with the water. So this operators here are check in that everything has been inserted, they know what to count for, they know what to look for, make sure everything is standing up and nothing is falling over or anything like that. And then what they do is they add the bulkhead manually and then they pull a bracket on the top that pushes the components down that's gonna hold them in place for the next stage.

- Okay. So we had a couple of machines that were looking over the parts as they were set on top. Now these parts are inserted and here you, you have people that are just double checking, making sure that the numbers correct that they're in the, in the right spot, that they're standing up properly and then they put that, that top cap on top just to hold everything in place through the, through the rest of the process.

- That is correct. Yeah.

- So now we're on the other side correct. Of where those people were. Were just double checking everything.

- Yes. And what they do then the conveyor takes the pallet and brings it through this machine over here is called a flexor. And what Flex does is that cleaning solution that cleans the bottom of the printed circuit board to get it ready for the actual soldiering process, which is down to the wave soldier. You can see they just visually run continuously on the conveyor belt through the wave solve.

- So it's just cleaning it and getting it ready for the next step.

- Correct. So once it's clean it goes into the oven. And again we have different stages here bringing the temperature up to the ideal level and then the boards are going to hit the waste. So the path right here, we actually have molten metal olten lead and the walls are going to move over the top at a control pace to touch for a specific number of seconds. So all those holes, all those legs that went through gets sold and leaded as it comes through the through the machine.

- Okay. So once it's through the machine then it should be at a point where everything's properly attached, correct. Where it needs to be? Yep,

- That is correct.

- Complex process

- A little bit then it will come out of the machine over here and they are manually removed and put into a vision inspection. The vision inspection here, they actually checking that there are no solar bridges. So solar quality we are looking that everything is nice, shiny, the right color that nothing is touching different legs. And then also looking for the length of the legs to make sure that they are within the parameters that they have to be.

- So we did a visual inspection back there just to make sure all the parts and pieces were in the right place. Correct. And now we're doing a visual inspection more to look at the bottom side to make sure that everything's

- Correct. Once you went through the soldier. Yeah.

- Once we went through that process.

- That is correct. Yep.

- So again, you know we see past on the screen there, the goal is that all of these are passing before they go through the next step.

- Every stage of our process we scan before so we scan entry and we scan exit. So when we have to look back at it in a couple of months because we're looking at particular issue, we understand when it came into the process and when it left and we know what state it can mean and what state it left. So you can see here she's removing the units from the pallet

- And those go back to be

- These go back to be reused. Be reused. Yep. So at this stage we actually waited 20, 30 minutes to allow the bolt to cool down so they can be handled. The operator will take one at a time and place them into this rotation table. What is that? Then goes into a camera and it's an extra check for the lead height. This is an lead height machine. We are actually checking that the lead heights on the bottom of the units are not too long where they should be. The reason why is 'cause we don't want lead heights touching the metal dissipating plate and creating short circuit.

- Alright

- So once,

- So we did a visual inspection back there right after it was heated. Now that it's pulled down, it's going through a machine inspection, correct?

- Yep. When it goes through the, the two of it there will grip it and putting into pallet of four, that will take it into the next stage, which is the actual testing side. This is the insert inserted testing. So what we do here, we have a bed of nails and the pallet will sit on top of the bed of nails. This will come down is hydraulically driven. It will push and we will switch on the components. We would apply voltage and current to make sure that they're reacting the way that they should. Something to know that is interesting is we run a parallel setup. So we have two machines in parallel. The US is the first time we running them in parallel every other site the world run them in series. The problem with that is if the second one breaks down, your first one stuck, you can't override it in here. We can decide to use both machines at the same time or we can use one at a time whenever we need to just to make sure that we don't get stopped.

- So an important thing here in manufacturing is that you want to keep the process moving, the machine breaks down, you wanna be able to have other parts of your process continue moving as much as you can.

- Correct. Yeah, that's very important because it's the manufacturing. Well if your machine is not producing your wasting time, wasting money and nobody wants to do that. Yep.

- So yep. And again the purpose of those of setting it on those pins is just to inject voltage current. Yeah. To make sure that it's working the way that it should. Correct. Yep.

- Wow.

- And this is long before we had the finished product. This is early

- Process, correct. This is actually a PCB level. We're not looking at the micro version yet. We're just looking at the printed circuit board. That's it.

- Wow.

- Okay. From there then we come into the functional test. So here we're running functional tests again at P printer circuit board level. So if you look, we have a pallet with four units. Each one of these heads will come down and it will run the test. This test can take anything from a minute to two and a half minutes, depends on what the model is. The test that we just saw before runs at about 10 seconds. So this ones a little bit longer. So we actually have 10 units here that we can run to make sure that we keep the cycle running through smoothly.

- And again, the goal is just to make sure that the printed circuit board is good to go. There's no issues with it before you go the rest of the process you want to catch any issues now. Yep.

- So before we put it into the plastic case Yeah we want to make sure that that printed circuit board is as solid as it can be. Once you get tested it comes into this machine that actually puts him into pallets of six because when we go into the mechanical assembly side of thing, we're going to be running six at a time. So six inver at a time. The masis machine just picks it up from the pallet, puts it into a different pallet and breaks it out into this trolley, which is the tool that we're going to use in the next process. Okay. Up to here, everything we've done is being printed circuit board driven. Now we get into the actual mechanical assembly. Okay. So we start with the carousel machine. So the first thing that we do is we're getting the bottom case ready. So what we have is the bottom cases here, they will come into this machine, which is a rotating table. We will put the dis dissipating spreader. So the heat dissipating spreader we talked about earlier, that will go onto the bottom case. The heat stakes will come down and it will melt the things into place. So those cannot move. It will keep going around. And then we are going to add two things. One is the perimeter glue on the actual perimeter. So when we close it we actually have glue to help with the ultrasonic welding as well. And then that little square team, the thermal imaging material that allows you to dissipate, we do that there as well.

- Okay. So anyone that knows Enphase Microinverters will start recognizing these bottom cases here. That's the bottom of the microinverter. Yep. There

- It's, so here is one. So what we do in this machine, we put the heat spreader in place. We put perimeter glue and this thermal image, the team squares and rectangles

- On it. So this machine is applying the glue around the perimeter. Correct. And this glue right in there at the perfect amount so that it's ready to go?

- That is correct. Everything is controlled for computer parameters. We have tolerances, the viscosity of the glue, the viscosity of the team, everything is controlled to great detail. Wow. From there then we come to the second stage, which is the top of the machine of the actual micro version now. So what we do is we get the bottom unit will come and sit on this nest here. This trolley we saw earlier has pallet to six printer circuit boards in it. So the machine will pick one and it will place it on the bottom case that has the glue and the team and everything on it. It will go through and if you see it right in front of you, there is a laser over there, there edger. And what that does is it reach the serial number and the QR code that we have on the board and it will print it on the actual plastic case. Okay. 'cause once we close it, we don't know what's inside. That's how we keep traceability. So if we look over here it will print that number, it tells you the model and it tells you the QR code as well.

- Okay. So up to this point we have the QR code on on the circuit board so you can track it through that process. Correct. Now that we're gonna close the circuit board inside, we use the laser to print it on the outside so we can still correct

- So we know which one it is.

- We can still see that not is, so this machine is simply preparing the bottom case and this machine is actually putting the circuit board in it. Correct. So that it's ready to go and then printed on the

- Outside I'm ready to be CAD to the top case. Correct. So then we come to the third machine. So in here we will have the top case, the bottom case with the PCB we'll be placing this particular nest. The machine will pick the top case, it will drop it on it as it moves through. If you see that machine over there with the 13 fingers, that's an ultrasonic welder. So it will take literally less than a second puts together applies energy and it ultrasonic welds bottom and top gate together. Once that happens, it's really hard to open that micro version. Now you need to get inside it, we will have to sew it, we can't really rip it open anymore from there then it keeps moving on and they will put the main label and the 1D level, the white barcode that the installers you guys use once install it to take that out and then you can exactly know where it's Yep,

- Yep. So at this point when we're done here that that microinver closed and we're not opening it again. Correct?

- Yeah. From that stage they go into the strolling and we actually will hold them for 60 minutes, one hour to allow the glue to cure before we go to the next stage. The next stage is potting, which is what this machinery here does. And what that does is we are going to inject the whole unit with different types of silicone, different viscosity to protect the printed circuit board inside because it's going to be sitting in a roof, you know high temperature, low temperature, that could be cystic activity. We don't want it to fall off if it shakes. So that's why we do this quoing injection. We can come and see over here if we come this way probably will be better. So you will see that the arm is coming through with the one that has been ported pushes in the pallet. It's gonna pick up an empty one. It's gonna take it down to the table. As it push it down the needle, we shoot forward. And if you look at the white reservoir, next one he places the empty one, you're going to see the white reservoir fill up black. You can see it's white right now. Right. Keep looking at it and you're gonna see the material actually coming through.

- Ah there it is. Right.

- So that we over inject. Now you know it's full, we put too much because we're trying to fold the whole cavity. So we over inject on purpose to make sure we have enough in there. Yes.

- And it's fairly complex. I mean you gotta make sure that you have the right products and materials for the humidity and the temperature that you're at. Correct.

- Right Viscosity. The right level of everything we have found is a very labor intensive process to keep it at the level that it should be. There is a very tight tolerance and we work hard to make sure that we keep it there all the time. What we're going to see pretty soon, it is one of my favorite parts of the whole manufacturing cycle. So it's gonna take one more. Oh it goes, it stopped.

- So at the previous step we sealed it. That keeps water out, that keeps the elements out. Nothing's getting in there for years and years that thing's staying together.

- Correct. It's still open here because we have the horseman, we just potted the material. Yep. We're going to put plastic cups to actually make it hermetically sealed. So here comes the last unit, he fills up the pallet and now you're going to see the cloth come out, picks it up, brings it into the conveyor belt for the oven and the other one will automatically slide forward.

- So now that's slowly starting to move through

- And this is going to move through the oven. Takes about 27 minutes to bake

- And that's just time that that belt is time perfectly correct.

- That is curing the ping materials that we put in there to make sure it's nice and solid when it comes out of the omen.

- So everything's solid in there. It's gonna stay together when it gets shipped, even if it's shipped overseas, if there's seismic activity, that stuff's all gonna stay in place because of of this step here. Correct?

- Yeah. Alright. So it will come, come out of the oven. They come out the oven like this and what we do here is when they come out we, we lead them cure for five to 10 minutes just to cool down. So when the operator touch 'em, they don't burn their their hands, we remove the rest of us and then they can put to the side for the final visual check, which is what we seeing over here. So here we're checking that all the porting when the weather, it should have been that nothing has leaked out of the way. If we take one unit, if we look at the hole, we are looking to see that the material is actually there. If they don't see this material, if there is leakage on the sides or anything like that, they will call quality control And we and the engineering team and when we take a look as to why that is happening,

- So this is the final visual inspection before those caps get on.

- It's another, it's not the final, it's another visual inspection before we go to the testing and then the actual cap inspection,

- One of the many visual inspections in the process process

- We, I said we're very strong on quality. So yes, once we have them clean and we're happy that they're ready to go to the next stage, the next stage is a high test over here, the HT test, what we are doing here is putting it down and we injecting a high voltage into it to make sure that everything has been manufactured the way that it should and it's not going to damage the microinverter. So that test usually takes if you look less than five seconds. So it's a continuous movement of tests. When you get the green screen, you're good to go.

- So if it were to fail that test, what does that mean? So if

- That failed test, that means that something has happened in the previous stages that the board cannot handle high voltage. If we have a failure here, we stop everything down the line because we need to understand what that happened because this, these tests should literally give us no failures ever. If we do see a failure here, something has gone wrong with that process, we have to go and figure out what that is.

- And again, you're committed to quality so if there's a failure here, you're stopping the line until your engineers figure out what's going on and we're ready to go again. That

- Is correct. Yeah. Alright. From here we actually go to the test room without actually testing the microinverter unit now. So we have them right here. We call these units the toasters 'cause you can see looks like a toaster. We ran 12 micro at the same time. Literally like if they were in a grid, in a roof, in a, in a home. So we run different functional tests and the the machinery here, the computers you can see are running the test keeping track of everything that's happening. If for whatever reason one of the units fails, the same money will happen when it's on the roof, the rest of the grid he has to keep running. So the test continues that particular microinverter that felt gets identified and then that will be analyzed by the engineers to figure out why the unit failed. Then we have usually two issues is or, or two different methods of resolution. If it's something that come that was just a software fix that can be done, it will be fixed and put back into the process. Most of the time that's not the case and we will scrap that unit. Again, we don't have many failures here. We rather scrap it and investigate rather than put it back into the system.

- So this is simulating what's gonna happen when it's on the roof? Correct? It's simulating DC voltage coming in.

- Yep. And the only thing we don't simulate here is temperature. Okay. Everything else, the AC compression, the DC coming in I see coming out. Everything else gets simulated here. And this dash we have the microinverter potted with two holes of the steel open. We cannot clean over hermetic seal or FEMA six compliant yet. So what we're going to do next, we're going to put two plastic cups on these holes. We're gonna ultrasonic weld that together and then we're gonna put the bracket on it. We're gonna put some glue and two screws so they can be packed out and ready to go. So at this stage here, the two cals are picked up on the fest station and this is the ultrasonic welder here, putting it into place at this time the unit is now hermetically sealed. So this is FEMA six compliant. Now it keeps coming down the machine. We have two different glue stations that we put glue before we place the bracket on it. You can see when the next microinverter comes out, they glue on it. It's like a W shape and a line there. We put the bracket on top, Moves on to the next station is our two screwdrivers here. So we're going to put two screws into the bracket. These are the torque and the force is all controlled by the computer here. And when we do this procedure here, the microinverter is actual, the manufacturing process is done now it's gonna come out And we go to a final check. So this operator here is checking to make sure the labels are right, the bracket is right, that there's no leakage from any of the different welds and other things that we put together. She's scan and gets a green pass saying that everything is gone right or it should, this is the final QA inspection. This is no production, it's a quality inspector here checking that the microinverter looks good. So when you guys get them on the field, they look professional, she will stand again, she will get a green list saying that everything is good to go. And if that is the case, she will pass it through to the next stage.

- So again, this machine will take the microinverter that's already potted, puts the two caps in, weld it, and then at that point it's sealed. Correct. You're not getting that thing apart without cutting it. It's sealed. Yeah. And then we put the, the metal bracket on and that's the bracket that we use to install it right on the rail floor wherever we install it. And it first it puts glue down, squeezes that together and then puts these two screws in and those screws.

- Correct. - Perfect. There's two screwdrivers. Put it in. Not too tight but tight enough so that it's there to stay. Yep.

- There is a specific tolerance that we have to hit. So that's where it goes. Yep. Correct. And this is a micro version ready to go.

- Ready to go. And then you have two final inspections here. One is a visual inspection and she's just making sure that you know everything looks good, the patch look

- Good. Yep. We're looking for the labels. Make sure there's no leakage on the side,

- There's no crew leaking out.

- Make sure the screws are on, make

- Sure everything looks good. And then your final inspection there is a QA special,

- They scan it and then make sure that that microinverter, the print circuit board assembly has gone through every detection in the process in the right sequence.

- And if it was outta sequence, it might still be okay. But you want to just, your goal is to put it through the right sequence, correct. As a double check to make sure

- Everything, yeah, if it's outta sequence where we get engineering involved, they can go through all the database to make sure that everything is the way that it should be and then they can over write certain things if they feel that it's worth it to go ahead and allow a micro converter to go through the rest of the process.

- So you wanna make sure that microinverter is good, but you also wanna make sure the process is happening like it should. No, that's correct. So visual inspection, QA inspection and then we're

- Then we're ready to pass, not ready

- To go.

- So once a QA is an inspection and is passed, it goes into a box of 18 here, we manually scanning each one of the units. It comes through to the scale and while the label is being printed, he puts the instruction guide on it waste to make sure that the weight is the weight that it should be. And we're waiting for the, the, the sticker, the label.

- So again, this is the final step. We're putting the micro inverters into the box, setting the box on the scale, putting the instruction manual in, getting the stickers. Stickers go on the outside. So we have all the serial numbers on the outside of all the micro inverters within that box and then we weigh it. Now if it's too heavy or too light, what does that mean?

- So things that can be too usually will be too light, not too heavy. Okay. Too light means that we may have missed the porting station. We may have missed components. So it's a final check to make sure that when we have 18 units we know what he should weigh. So we want to make sure that everything is correct within the

- Box. So it's just like a double, double, double, double, double check.

- We always check quality, everything that is correct. Yes. Perfect. So from there he goes to the final station. When they seal the box, they put the made in the USA sticker and they send it off to us.

- We're ready to go. Yep. So that's the end of the line. That's, that's our tour of the Enphase factory. I'm really impressed with all the, the inspections. You guys do quality control all the way throughout the process. Definitely quality US jobs is, is high on the priority here for Enphase. Miguel, really appreciate your time and best of luck.

- A pleasure. I hope you got a good insight of what we do here and it was a pleasure to host

- You. Thank you. you guys use once install it to take that out and then you can exactly know where it's Yep,

- Yep. So at this point when we're done here that that micro vers closed and we're not opening it again. Correct?

- Yeah. From that stage they go into the strolling and we actually will hold them for 60 minutes, one hour to allow the glue to cure before we go to the next stage. The next stage is potting, which is what this machinery here does. And what that does is we are going to inject the whole unit with different types of silicone, different viscosity to protect the printed circuit board inside because it's going to be sitting in a roof, you know high temperature, low temperature, that could be cystic activity. We don't want it to fall off if it shakes. So that's why we do this quoing injection. We can come and see over here if we come this way probably will be better. So you will see that the arm is coming through with the one that has been ported pushes in the pallet. It's gonna pick up an empty one. It's gonna take it down to the table. As it push it down the needle, we shoot forward. And if you look at the white reservoir, next one he places the empty one, you're going to see the white reservoir fill up black. You can see it's white right now. Right. Keep looking at it and you're gonna see the material actually coming through.

- Ah there it is. Right.

- So that we over inject. Now you know it's full, we put too much because we're trying to fold the whole cavity. So we over inject on purpose to make sure we have enough in there. Yes.

- And it's fairly complex. I mean you gotta make sure that you have the right products and materials for the humidity and the temperature that you're at. Correct.

- Right Viscosity. The right level of everything we have found is a very labor intensive process to keep it at the level that it should be. There is a very tight tolerance and we work hard to make sure that we keep it there all the time. What we're going to see pretty soon, it is one of my favorite parts of the whole manufacturing cycle. So it's gonna take one more. Oh it goes, it stopped.

- So at the previous step we sealed it. That keeps water out, that keeps the elements out. Nothing's getting in there for years and years that thing's staying together.

- Correct. It's still open here because we have the horseman, we just potted the material. Yep. We're going to put plastic cups to actually make it hermetically sealed. So here comes the last unit, he fills up the pallet and now you're going to see the cloth come out, picks it up, brings it into the conveyor belt for the oven and the other one will automatically slide forward.

- So now that's slowly starting to move through

- And this is going to move through the oven. Takes about 27 minutes to bake

- And that's just time that that belt is time perfectly correct.

- That is curing the ping materials that we put in there to make sure it's nice and solid when it comes out of the omen.

- So everything's solid in there. It's gonna stay together when it gets shipped, even if it's shipped overseas, if there's seismic activity, that stuff's all gonna stay in place because of of this step here. Correct?

- Yeah. Alright. So it will come, come out of the oven. They come out the oven like this and what we do here is when they come out we, we lead them cure for five to 10 minutes just to cool down. So when the operator touch 'em, they don't burn their their hands, we remove the rest of us and then they can put to the side for the final visual check, which is what we seeing over here. So here we're checking that all the porting when the weather, it should have been that nothing has leaked out of the way. If we take one unit, if we look at the hole, we are looking to see that the material is actually there. If they don't see this material, if there is leakage on the sides or anything like that, they will call quality control And we and the engineering team and when we take a look as to why that is happening,

- So this is the final visual inspection before those caps get on.

- It's another, it's not the final, it's another visual inspection before we go to the testing and then the actual cap inspection,

- One of the many visual inspections in the process process

- We, I said we're very strong on quality. So yes, once we have them clean and we're happy that they're ready to go to the next stage, the next stage is a high test over here, the HT test, what we are doing here is putting it down and we injecting a high voltage into it to make sure that everything has been manufactured the way that it should and it's not going to damage the microverter. So that test usually takes if you look less than five seconds. So it's a continuous movement of tests. When you get the green screen, you're good to go.

- So if it were to fail that test, what does that mean? So if

- That failed test, that means that something has happened in the previous stages that the board cannot handle high voltage. If we have a failure here, we stop everything down the line because we need to understand what that happened because this, these tests should literally give us no failures ever. If we do see a failure here, something has gone wrong with that process, we have to go and figure out what that is.

- And again, you're committed to quality so if there's a failure here, you're stopping the line until your engineers figure out what's going on and we're ready to go again. That

- Is correct. Yeah. Alright. From here we actually go to the test room without actually testing the microverter unit now. So we have them right here. We call these units the toasters 'cause you can see looks like a toaster. We ran 12 micro at the same time. Literally like if they were in a grid, in a roof, in a, in a home. So we run different functional tests and the the machinery here, the computers you can see are running the test keeping track of everything that's happening. If for whatever reason one of the units fails, the same money will happen when it's on the roof, the rest of the grid he has to keep running. So the test continues that particular microverter that felt gets identified and then that will be analyzed by the engineers to figure out why the unit failed. Then we have usually two issues is or, or two different methods of resolution. If it's something that come that was just a software fix that can be done, it will be fixed and put back into the process. Most of the time that's not the case and we will scrap that unit. Again, we don't have many failures here. We rather scrap it and investigate rather than put it back into the system.

- So this is simulating what's gonna happen when it's on the roof? Correct? It's simulating DC voltage coming in.

- Yep. And the only thing we don't simulate here is temperature. Okay. Everything else, the AC compression, the DC coming in I see coming out. Everything else gets simulated here. And this dash we have the micro inversor potted with two holes of the steel open. We cannot clean over hermetic seal or FEMA six compliant yet. So what we're going to do next, we're going to put two plastic cups on these holes. We're gonna ultrasonic weld that together and then we're gonna put the bracket on it. We're gonna put some glue and two screws so they can be packed out and ready to go. So at this stage here, the two cals are picked up on the fest station and this is the ultrasonic welder here, putting it into place at this time the unit is now hermetically sealed. So this is FEMA six compliant. Now it keeps coming down the machine. We have two different glue stations that we put glue before we place the bracket on it. You can see when the next microverter comes out, they glue on it. It's like a W shape and a line there. We put the bracket on top, Moves on to the next station is our two screwdrivers here. So we're going to put two screws into the bracket. These are the torque and the force is all controlled by the computer here. And when we do this procedure here, the microverter is actual, the manufacturing process is done now it's gonna come out And we go to a final check. So this operator here is checking to make sure the labels are right, the bracket is right, that there's no leakage from any of the different welds and other things that we put together. She's scan and gets a green pass saying that everything is gone right or it should, this is the final QA inspection. This is no production, it's a quality inspector here checking that the microverter looks good. So when you guys get them on the field, they look professional, she will stand again, she will get a green list saying that everything is good to go. And if that is the case, she will pass it through to the next stage.

- So again, this machine will take the microinverter that's already potted, puts the two caps in, weld it, and then at that point it's sealed. Correct. You're not getting that thing apart without cutting it. It's sealed. Yeah. And then we put the, the metal bracket on and that's the bracket that we use to install it right on the rail floor wherever we install it. And it first it puts glue down, squeezes that together and then puts these two screws in and those screws.

- Correct. - Perfect. There's two screwdrivers. Put it in. Not too tight but tight enough so that it's there to stay. Yep.

- There is a specific tolerance that we have to hit. So that's where it goes. Yep. Correct. And this is a micro version ready to go.

- Ready to go. And then you have two final inspections here. One is a visual inspection and she's just making sure that you know everything looks good, the patch look

- Good. Yep. We're looking for the labels. Make sure there's no leakage on the side,

- There's no crew leaking out.

- Make sure the screws are on, make

- Sure everything looks good. And then your final inspection there is a QA special,

- They scan it and then make sure that that microverter, the print circuit board assembly has gone through every detection in the process in the right sequence.

- And if it was outta sequence, it might still be okay. But you want to just, your goal is to put it through the right sequence, correct. As a double check to make sure

- Everything, yeah, if it's outta sequence where we get engineering involved, they can go through all the database to make sure that everything is the way that it should be and then they can over write certain things if they feel that it's worth it to go ahead and allow a micro converter to go through the rest of the process.

- So you wanna make sure that microverter iss good, but you also wanna make sure the process is happening like it should. No, that's correct. So visual inspection, QA inspection and then we're

- Then we're ready to pass, not ready

- To go.

- So once a QA is an inspection and is passed, it goes into a box of 18 here, we manually scanning each one of the units. It comes through to the scale and while the label is being printed, he puts the instruction guide on it waste to make sure that the weight is the weight that it should be. And we're waiting for the, the, the sticker, the label.

- So again, this is the final step. We're putting the microinverters into the box, setting the box on the scale, putting the instruction manual in, getting the stickers. Stickers go on the outside. So we have all the serial numbers on the outside of all the micro inverters within that box and then we weigh it. Now if it's too heavy or too light, what does that mean?

- So things that can be too usually will be too light, not too heavy. Okay. Too light means that we may have missed the porting station. We may have missed components. So it's a final check to make sure that when we have 18 units we know what he should weigh. So we want to make sure that everything is correct within the

- Box. So it's just like a double, double, double, double, double check.

- We always check quality, everything that is correct. Yes. Perfect. So from there he goes to the final station. When they seal the box, they put the made in the USA sticker and they send it off to us.

- We're ready to go. Yep. So that's the end of the line. That's, that's our tour of the Endphase factory. I'm really impressed with all the, the inspections. You guys do quality control all the way throughout the process. Definitely quality US jobs is, is high on the priority here for Enphase. Miguel, really appreciate your time and best of luck.

- A pleasure. I hope you got a good insight of what we do here and it was a pleasure to host

- You. Thank you.