Where USB Memory Sticks Are Born
31st July 2026
In January, I had the fortune of being a keynote speaker at LCA2013. One of the tchotchkes I received from the conference organizers was a little USB memory stick.
I thought it was a neat coincidence that I was in a factory that manufactured exactly such memory sticks about a week before the conference. In fact, I managed to score a rare treat: the factory owner gave me a sheet of raw chip-on-flex, prior to bonding and encapsulation, to take home.
…
The lady is using some sort of tool made out of hand-cut bamboo. I still haven’t figured out exactly how they work, but every time I’ve seen this process they are using what looks like a modified chopstick to place the chips on the board. My best guess is that the bamboo sticks have just the right surface energy to adhere to the silicon die, such that silicon will stick to the tip of the bamboo rod. A dot of glue is pre-applied to the bare boards, so when the operator touches the die down onto the glue, the surface tension of the glue pulls the die off of the bamboo stick.
It’s trippy to think that the chips inside my USB stick were handled using modified chopsticks.