IBM Model F XT Keyboard Assembly

[Nuum]

Hi,

I found this fairly interesting video on Youtube:

It shows the (partial) assembly of a Model F XT (PC XT) keyboard by industrial robots. The robots have, as apparently many things made by IBM, very obscure names: 7535 and 7565. Also, as there was a discussion about this, in the video they call the hammers of the Model F "fly pads".
I'm sorry, if this video has been posted previously. I also don't know if this is the right spot to post this video since I don't know whether this area is just for self-made videos.

Greetings,
Nuum

[scottc]

Fascinating video. Thanks a lot for posting it. Really enjoyed that!

[Halvar]

Very interesting - thanks for posting!

So where can 7bit hire these machines for round 5 sorting?

[Hypersphere]

Amazing! It makes my reassembly of an XT keyboard look positively Neanderthal!

With such automation, IBM must have produced a rather large number of XT keyboards. How many, I wonder; and where are they now?

[REVENGE]

You see the 7000 series robotic arms on auction here and there every once in a while.

[Muirium]

Great find, and just the kind of stuff the [youtube] embed is for. I watched it before reading your description, and was just about to mention the "fly pads" myself!

Listening through the narrator's barrage of marketing babble (it's a very dense script!) I heard something that makes me think they over-reached. The really good stuff (from about minute 7 onward) where "key buttons" (the lower half of buckling spring caps) are popped right on a barrel plate is taking place in a lab, not the Greenock factory floor. IBM was still trying to figure out how to industrialise it. Who knows if they ever did? What we saw was a single unit demo for the camera. Meanwhile, back in the first scene, those robots working in parallel were simply orienting the "key buttons" onto mylar sheets so that (presumably) human workers could pop them on a barrel plate later.

But I want to see more of that huge beam spring keyboard you see for a moment, running the "Series One" master computer! The boss gets something better.

[xwhatsit]

Wow, so slow! Industrial automation has really come a long way since then.

[Nuum]

After I have assembled my AT several times now, I really like how they simply put on all the keycaps by pressing the whole keyboard onto a sheet of keycaps. That looks really amazing!

[andrewjoy]

I did not see any springs or hammers getting put on!

And also we know have confirmation that model F stands for Fly-plate!

[Muirium]

I think the narrator said "fly-pad", but in any case that's not confirmation of the model name, just of that component's name!

I'd be surprised if IBM ever did fully automate the buckling spring keyboard assembly process, start to finish. They certainly didn't show that in the video. The only thing being done by robots in the live factory was aligning fly-plates in the same orientation onto mylar sheets. All the good stuff was in the lab demo, later in the video. And even then it was far from the final product.

If they'd ever managed to get the whole process automated, they could have aggressively reduced the cost over the years, and kept these keyboards around for longer. As far as I know, even crappy modern keyboards are still assembled with a lot of human hands along the way.

[andrewjoy]

Its still impressive for the time. I also don't see them ever doing it all automated ether i mean if they did as you say they would have been much cheaper. Was there relay that much cost saved form switching to a membrane from a pcb ? Sure its a big PCB but its not going to cost that much once the tooling is done and i am sure IBM had the facility to make it in house. I guess you also save on the controller and cheaper construction of the backplate but as we have seen very early model Ms they have the same back plate construction as a model F. The only thing i can think of is they switched to the M as it was cheaper to automate the assembly.

[mr_a500]

Fascinating video. I love the narration - so professional. Modern British narrators sound like lazy "everyday blokes" doing a half-assed job.

[Muirium]

None of those b******s are classically trained.

Spoiler:

[mr_a500]

That was hilarious. Where the hell did you find that?

[Muirium]

Google for Monkey Dust and you'll find a load of clips. It was a spectacular show made by filthy minds, from about a decade ago, on BBC Three. Most sketches were long running, returning to the same characters over many episodes. Highlights include the First Time Cottager, Clive (a pathological liar with an especially sordid sex life), and as you saw The Classically Trained Actor. I still impersonate him frequently! The show is obscure enough, even over here, that strangers are sure I'm a weirdo rather than just a reference nerd; the reality of course lies in between.

If we lived in a just world, blockbuster movies would be about this stuff instead of other "comics"…

[mr_a500]

BBC Three stuff doesn't end up in Canada. We mostly get the BBC One murder mystery stuff that the bloody Americans seem to love.

[seebart]

WOW, awesome find

Thank you for that.

[benichka]

Sweet!
I love this kind of video