How laptops are made
A 1981 Epson with an LCD, a battery and a built-in printer was already being called a laptop.
- stations
- 6
- things upstream
- 106
- raw sources
- 31
- steps from the ground
- 10
The short version
A laptop is assembled in a metal or plastic clamshell. The motherboard, memory and storage are fixed into the lower half, where most of the hardware lives. A keyboard and trackpad go on top, a lithium-ion battery fills much of the underside, and a hinged lid carries the flat-panel screen.
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Build the motherboard
Surface-mount machines populate a multilayer board with the processor and memory, and a reflow oven solders them.
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Mold or machine the case
The lower and upper halves of the case are molded in plastic or machined from metal.
Goes in -
Fit storage and battery
A solid-state drive and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery are fitted in the base.
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Install keyboard and trackpad
A thin keyboard, usually with scissor switches, and a trackpad go in the top of the base.
Goes in -
Hinge on the display
The flat-panel screen, usually 11 to 17 inches diagonally, goes in the lid with a webcam above it.
Goes in -
Load and burn in
Software is installed and the machine is run for hours to find early failures before shipping.
Worth repeating
- Seiko Epson showed an early machine called a laptop in 1981 with an LCD screen, a rechargeable battery and a built-in printer, weighing 1.6 kg.
- Laptop keyboards more often use scissor switches than the rubber domes common on full-size keyboards.
- Most of a laptop's hardware sits in the lower half under the keyboard, and the lid holds little besides the screen.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and laptop starts as these 31 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How laptops are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/laptop