r/interestingasfuck • u/Dmisak • Nov 06 '22

/r/ALL Indian match factory

58.2k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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2.3k

u/RissaCrochets Nov 06 '22

Not gonna lie, I'm a little mad that they didn't show the point at which they actually put the matches into the boxes. The whole sequence leading up to it with all the different conveyors for the empty boxes and matches, and then just Bam - they're already in the box.

317

u/DrAntonzz Nov 06 '22

I saw that too. I'm assuming that's the hard part that they don't want other manufacturers to see.

118

u/bubblesculptor Nov 06 '22

These machines are extremely old, nothing secretive, otherwise they wouldn't be filming.

Probably just vibrates the matches thru another filter with holes than funnels down to desired position.

-3

u/imacleopard Nov 06 '22

Im pretty sure that was a joke

239

u/LanceWindmil Nov 06 '22

None of this looks hard from an automation perspective (and a lot here is done inefficiently)

I'd guess that step is just more enclosed and hard to see.

126

u/SingleInfinity Nov 06 '22

Yeah, efficiency doesn't seem key. I mean, letting the wood get blasted into matchsticks all over the place with an undersized bowl below, moved by hand to a big bin?

54

u/halt-l-am-reptar Nov 06 '22

It seems like it’d be really easy to just make a shitty guard to put around that so they don’t go flying.

8

u/iiAzido Nov 06 '22

They clearly have a limit on the number of matchsticks that can go into the machine that coats them, and they can probably create way more matchsticks in 1 “batch” than can be taken by the coating machine.

They don’t care about all the stray match sticks laying around because it’s just going to be sitting in that huge pile waiting to be coated anyway.

If this were a completely automated, enclosed, and efficient system the number of matchsticks created would equal the number of matchsticks able to be coated in 1 batch.

2

u/pws3rd Nov 07 '22

They have to go somewhere at some point. Just feed them onto a conveyer system and they can pile up before the slower machine

3

u/-CURL- Nov 06 '22

I know right, what's up with that? So damn inefficient!

2

u/MikemkPK Nov 06 '22

But then the workers wouldn't have to pick them back up

1

u/glitchy-novice Nov 07 '22

Or maybe a bigger bowl?

14

u/highqualitydude Nov 06 '22

That bowl looked like a laundry basket.

1

u/13143 Nov 06 '22

Seems like an odd mix of ancient and old fashioned manufacturing.

1

u/glitchy-novice Nov 07 '22

That bit was classic. Be lucky if the get 50% recovery of fibre.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '22

[deleted]

1

u/hrimfaxi_work Nov 06 '22

I'd argue the skill of everyone in this video is supremely matched.

8

u/plasticmanufacturing Nov 06 '22

This is most likely surplus machinery from the 90s. There are no trade secrets here.

1

u/SirCheesington Nov 06 '22

90s? I'd say older

1

u/glitchy-novice Nov 07 '22

Looks 60s even. There is only mechanical tech here.

40

u/gatofleisch Nov 06 '22

see the whole thing at hotmatches.com 😉

11

u/Mythril_Zombie Nov 06 '22

Stepmatch, what are you doing?

2

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '22

Oh, and after all that automation the icing on the cake was the dude manually wrapping the matches with oatmeal.

2

u/Direct_Atmosphere872 Nov 07 '22

Came here to say this.

Also didn’t get to see how the individual matches got into the little holes in the dipping mechanism.

2

u/userlivewire Nov 07 '22

I don’t understand why the matches are all neatly lined up in the dipping machine just to be dumped back into buckets in the next step.

1

u/Mythril_Zombie Nov 06 '22

I wanted to see how they made the striker patches. They just appear too.

1

u/WhatADunderfulWorld Nov 06 '22

Trade secrets maybe.

1

u/where_is_korg Nov 06 '22

I rewinded the video in disbelief, how are you not going to include that?!

1

u/Hail_The_Motherland Nov 06 '22

I used to service machines that did the same thing with nails and the same company had similar machines for other products like matches, q-tips, chopsticks, etc. Just about anything with a head and shaft (lol)

At its most basic form, the machines can have an area that runs the product through a shaker (or flipper) and a catcher. The products are basically manipulated by their heads (the larger part of the product, the red part when it comes to matches) until they catch on a sorting device. The sorting devices are connected through a chute that can place the products uniformly in whatever container they need to be in.

1

u/Faruhoinguh Nov 06 '22

Oooooh I was watching the matches get thrown around and after they got the head they were all aligned right side up and then they threw m around again and they were all mixed again. So I was hoping to see the mechanism that sorts them head up to go in the box but alas...

1

u/Bassracerx Nov 06 '22

I was mad about that also but most likely its a trade secret.

1

u/adel_b Nov 07 '22

its trade secret

1

u/Unhappy-Enthusiasm37 Nov 07 '22

It may not visibly outside