LG Display LCD Panel Factory - Paju, South Korea

The first thing to understand about such factories is they are huge. This particular facility currently has two panel factories: One is a “Gen 7″ factory capable of creating “motherglass” that is 1,950 by 2,250 mm, and the other is a “Gen 8″ factory, which can create glass that is 2,200 by 2,500 mm. The Gen 7 factory turns can turn its glass into eight 42-inch LCD TV panels or six 47-inch LCD TV panels; the Gen 8 factory can do 8 47-inch LCD TV panels, 6 55-inch LCD TV panels, or 18 32-inch LCD panels from each piece of mother-glass.

LG Display Gen 8 LCD Factory

Overview of LCD Panel and Mother-Glass

The current LCD process works by sandwiching liquid crystals between two pieces of large, specially treated sheets of mother glass. Huge machines take the first of these layers and build a “thin film transistor” layer on top of it. This transistor layer creates what is known as “active matrix LCD,” the kind used in notebooks, monitors, and TVs.

The other glass layer typically contains a color filter and a polarizing film. By detecting changes in voltage, the transistors control the amount of light being let through at any place in the display, and the liquid crystals let the light through for each of the sub-pixels: the red, green, and blue as defined on the color filter. This very complex process creates what is known as the LCD panel itself.

LG Display uses a technology called “In-Plane Switching” (or IPS, as per Panasonic LCD display technology – IPS), which aligns the liquid crystal cells in a horizontal direction, as opposed to “Vertical Alignment,” which some other makers use. LG believes this gives their displays a better viewing angle and says it consumes less power. But the panel is only part of a modern display. Another facility at the site takes the panels and turns them into LCD modules, which means adding various other layers, such as controllers to direct the TFT display, diffusers and prisms, light guides, and perhaps most obviously, the backlighting unit. The vast majority of TVs today use fluorescent backlighting, though LED backlighting is now common in notebook displays, and LED or edge-lighting is now entering the high-end TV market.

Automated LCD Panel Inspection Test

Once the module is created, it then typically gets sent to another site (and another company), which adds the tuner and other electronics and the case it needs to become a TV. At the Paju facility, the LCD panel factories are as tall as a 20-story building, though they only actually have 4 floors of manufacturing. That’s because the machines that move the glass and etch the lines that make the transistors are enormous.

The module building is smaller, about 6 stories tall–though actually a lot more people work in that building (as the panel process is so automated.) LG Display has about 7,800 workers at the plant; and the whole enterprise (including a nearly facility that makes chemicals and the glass) employs about 15,000 people. The facility even has a dormitory for 5,700 of the workers.

The facility is located in Paju, which is northwest of Seoul, within site of the DMZ. And the facility has space for three more panel factories, though the company has not yet announced any specific plans.

The facility has a showroom for showing off the company’s technology–from viewing angles of current TVs to the company’s 240-Hz panels (done by scanning the backlight) to technology for 3D TVs.

LG Display LCD TV Show Room with 240Hz TV

Sharp Kameyama LCD Factory

Sharp Kameyama LCD Manufacturing Plant, the World’s most advanced production base for integrated manufacture of large LCD televisions. The Kameyama Plant (Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, Japan) is Sharp’s latest manufacturing facility for LCD TVs. With this plant, Sharp aims to create a business model that serves as the ultimate example of economic efficiency, social mindedness and environmental conservation.

Integrated LCD Production

The plant combines Sharp vast experience and knowledge in R&D and mass production, with 50 years of TV and 30 years of LCD — into a world-first, cutting-edge facility that carries out highly efficient integrated production of LCD TVs, from the manufacture of LCD panels to the assembly of final products. With a site area of about 330,000 m², the plant’s high-efficiency production lines eliminate wasted work and shorten production lead-time.

The plant produces the world’s largest mother glass substrates for LCD panels (Example yield per 1,500 x 1,800 mm substrate is six 37-inch wide format LCD panels). This enable Sharp possible to produce LCD models with even larger screen size and reduces production time and costs, responding to a significantly expanding large-screen LCD TV market.

Large Mother Glass Substrates

Green Factory

The Kameyama Plant has also been designed as a Super Green Factory, giving maximum consideration for the environment. Eliminating the transport of LCD panels between different plants means less packaging material is needed and less CO2 and nitrogen dioxide are emitted from transport vehicles. Sharp uses its existing environmental technologies as well as adding new technologies to dramatically reduce the burden on the environment.

• Installation of Cogeneration System Using LNG - A cogeneration system supplies the plant with about one third of its annual electricity and utilises waste heat for air conditioning. This reduces CO2 emissions by about 40% of the current level. LNG (liquefied natural gas) is supplied through pipelines, eliminating the need for tanker truck transportation.
• Installation of a Solar Power Generation System – The wall of the plant has about 600 photovoltaic modules.
• 100% Water Recycling in the Production Process – The plant collects all the wastewater from the production process (max. 9,000 tons a day) and recycles it with water purification techniques using microorganism treatment.
• Zero Discharge to Landfills – For process waste as well, the plant is designed to achieve zero discharge to landfill, by reducing discharge and reusing and recycling as much waste as possible with diverse technologies and know-how.

Currently, the Sharp LCD plant at Kameyama is putting nut to bolt at a frenetic pace, cutting out all sort of series LCD panels from 8th generation mother glass. A note about LCD generations for the uninitiated: the term ‘generation’ corresponds to the size of the mother glass out of which LCD panels are cut.

Factory snapshots
Kameyama LCD factory was a mammoth techno complex. State-of-the-art automated robots and conveyor belts populated the place, and the intricacy and neatness was impeccable.

Energy Supply System of Kameyama Plant

Sharp Kameyama Plant Facts

LCD TV Test Facility

Anti Earth Quake System

Sharp Memorial Hall In Kameyama

Thin-film Solar Cells Covering Windows of Building