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Apple iPhone X parts factory in Sherman starts production with 200 new employees

The facility will make specialized lasers that enable some of the iPhone X's popular features, such as facial recognition that unlocks the phone and its camera's portrait mode.

A new facility in North Texas is starting up its production line for some of the technology that powers the Apple iPhone X's latest features.

Silicon Valley-based Finisar has hired 200 people and begun operations at a new plant in Sherman, a city about 65 miles north of Dallas. The facility produces vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, that are used in smartphones.

The lasers enable some of the iPhone X's features, such as facial recognition that unlocks the phone, a portrait mode that takes professional-looking photos and a tool that creates animated emojis based on the user's facial expressions.

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Jeff Brown, general manager of Finisar's Sherman facility, said the plant is making initial products to test its production line. It will make samples to show customers, such as Apple, at the end of August, he said.

“It’s like if you’re making a complicated recipe," he said. "You want to make sure the recipe is just right and works the way its supposed to.”

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The facility will become fully operational by the end of the year and grow to 500 employees in 2019, he said.

The lasers are made in clean rooms with air filtration systems. Employees wear protective suits and googles to prevent contamination by dust or other particles. They use computers and microscopes to help manufacture a wafer that is sliced and diced into tiny lasers called VCSELs. The VCSELs emit light vertically instead of horizontally and use reflected light to measure distance. They help capture 3-D images, such as a person's hand gestures or facial expressions.

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Finisar announced plans for the new facility in December after being awarded $390 million from Apple to ramp up the production of VCSELs. The tech company decided to work with Finisar after realizing that it needed 10 times more specialized lasers than were available worldwide,  Apple's chief operating officer Jeff Williams said in a CNBC interview in December.

Finisar also has a manufacturing plant in Allen, but the Sherman facility is more than four times its size at almost 700,000 square feet.

The funds came from Apple's Advanced Manufacturing Fund. Apple chief executive Tim Cook announced the fund to show the company's commitment to job creation in the U.S.  Apple is one of the companies that President Donald Trump has criticized for making products overseas. Apple also awarded $200 million to Kentucky-based glass company Corning to research and produce scratch-resistant glass used for iPhones.

Many of the 200 employees hired by Finisar are from North Texas cities, such as Sherman or Denton — but some engineers have been hired from as far away as North Carolina, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York, Finisar spokeswoman Victoria McDonald said.  About 70 percent of the employees are high school graduates, she said. About 30 percent have college degrees or higher.

Brown said the company benefited from North Texas' history of semiconductor makers like Texas Instruments. It could also draw from Sherman's industrial hubs, such as the facility of juice maker Sunny Delight and meat processor for Tyson Foods.

McDonald would not say what the starting salary is for Finisar's Sherman employees.

Finisar is working with local community college Grayson College and a local high school program to grow the pipeline of qualified employees. It donated $25,000 to a dual-credit training program for high school students interested in a career in advanced manufacturing.

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Brown said Finisar is focused on making VCSELs for smartphones, but wants to expand into the automotive market. He said the lasers could be used for high-tech features in cars, such as a depth perception tool that detects if a driver is falling asleep.