AirPods Plug B788 automatic assembly line of a certain company

AirPods Plug B788 is a typical consumer electronics precision connector project. The product is small, has high appearance requirements, and has intensive assembly and welding processes. Focusing on the Apple AirPods Plug charging head equipment needs and Luxshare precision connector manufacturing needs, MIJOINT intelligently provides the B788 product automatic assembly line, covering Contact & CNC, Mesh & CNC welding, Frame assembly, laser and other processes, and improves assembly consistency through visual guidance and closed-loop control.

Project background

B788 Plug is an AirPods charging connector. The product is nearly round in shape and difficult to position; CNC is an electroplating product, which has high requirements on appearance and does not allow scratches and bright marks; the product is small in size and requires high assembly accuracy. At the same time, the welding pressable surface is small, and the welding head needs to be cleaned regularly.

These characteristics determine that the project cannot rely on manual visual positioning and manual assembly. For such micro-precision parts, position recognition, automatic compensation, welding cleaning, belt changing and detection closed loop jointly determine the stability of the production line.

Automation solution

MIJOINT intelligently designed an automatic assembly line for the B788 project. The equipment layout includes CNC & CONTACT assembly welding machines, CNC & MESH assembly welding machines and Frame assembly machines. The entire line uses machine vision to identify product features, correct the position first, and then put it into the fixture to complete assembly and welding.

The project uses vision-guided assembly and vision-guided welding. The vision system identifies the 6D posture of the assembly and the assembled parts, that is, XYZ and RxRyRz, and then guides the robot or actuator to perform high-precision flexible assembly. After assembly, machine vision detects and feeds back to the control system in real time, and the control system automatically corrects deviations to ensure that the product is within the tolerance range.

In the refueling process, the project introduced a zero-stop refueling solution. The Tray tray can be automatically changed by AGV, and the terminal strips are automatically welded by laser to achieve material change without stopping the machine, reducing waiting time and improving utilization rate. In response to the problem of welding head cleaning, the project uses a CO2 cleaning machine to automatically clean the welding head to reduce quality risks caused by changes in welding status.

Process Difficulties

The first type of difficulty is the positioning of circular approximate products. The B788 Plug has a nearly circular shape, and it is difficult to stably identify the direction and attitude using conventional mechanical positioning. The project uses visual identification of product features to complete position correction before assembly to improve the stability of loading and clamping.

The second type of difficulty is appearance protection.CNC electroplated parts do not allow scratches or bright marks, and the clamping, handling, welding and inspection processes are required to minimize hard contact and abnormal friction. Automated equipment requires a balance between speed, clamping force and positioning accuracy.

The third type of difficulty is the small window of the welding process. The welding pressable surface is small, and the welding head needs to be cleaned once every half an hour, indicating that the welding state has a significant impact on quality. MIJOINT improves the stability of the welding process through visual guided welding, CO2 automatic cleaning and welding inspection.

Customer value

The B788 automatic assembly line integrates visual positioning, assembly welding, automatic material change and closed-loop inspection to help customers reduce manual intervention and improve the stability of precision connector production. The PPT marked the CT of welding equipment 1.3s and the CT of assembly equipment 0.8s, which reflects the adaptability of this solution to the high cycle time requirements of consumer electronics.

More importantly, the project has accumulated key capabilities such as visual positioning of micro-circular parts, appearance protection of electroplated parts, welding cleaning and zero-stop material change. These capabilities can be migrated to more AirPods, Type-C, acoustic structural parts, and micro-connector automation projects.