"Emergency surgery" in the late-night workshop
At two o'clock in the morning at the beginning of last month, I was awakened by the vibration of my mobile phone. Lao Zhao from a mobile phone foundry in Shenzhen was sweating in the video: "Mr. Li! Your electronic product packaging machine treats Snapdragon chips as potatoes!" In the picture, the circuit board that should have been wrapped in anti-static film was dancing on the conveyor belt. I grabbed the tool bag and rushed to the airport - this is related to the reputation of our factory's newly developed third-generation customized equipment for the electronics industry, which is more worrying than my own children failing the exam.
Embroidery hidden in a 10,000-level workshop
Walking into the customer's dust-free workshop, I finally understood where the problem was. Their original electronic product packaging machine was designed according to the standard motherboard size, but the motherboards of the folding screen mobile phones in this new order were thinner than usual, as thick as an A4 paper. The photoelectric sensors on our equipment are still following the old rules of "serving dishes to different people", but isn't that treating precious chips like potatoes?
During the overnight modification, the production line supervisor Lao Zhou held up a vernier caliper and smacked his lips: "The 'eyes' you installed on the sensor are accurate enough to measure the leg hair of a mosquito, right?" This is true. The micron-level detection module we upgraded for the electronic product packaging machine was originally designed to cope with the increasingly abnormal precision trend of electronic components. After working until daybreak, when the first motherboard with a customized anti-static film slid steadily into the carrier tape, Lao Zhao wiped his face and said, "Well, this equipment is better at serving people than my confinement nanny."
The 72 Transformations of Anti-static Battle Suit
If we talk about the most labor-intensive customized equipment in the electronics industry, we have to count the anti-static packaging solution. Last year, when they were renovating the production line for a chip factory in Suzhou, their Japanese technical director walked around the workshop with an electrostatic tester, but he didn't measure any excessive data in the packaging process. Later, the old man got drunk at the celebration banquet and insisted that our equipment was wearing "invisible anti-static clothing."
In fact, there is no such thing as black technology, it's just that all the metal parts of ordinary packaging machines are replaced with special composite materials. The anti-static solution recently made for the Dongguan headphone factory is even more amazing - a layer of nano-coating is applied to the heat sealing head of the electronic product packaging machine, and even the hair-thin metal wire will not retain static electricity when packaging Bluetooth headphones. The customer's quality inspector joked that the static value of the goods packaged by this equipment is more stable than the temper of the giant panda.
"Transformers" on the automated packaging line
The case that made us most proud last quarter was the whole-line upgrade for a smart wearable enterprise in Hangzhou. Their pain point is that the product line is too diverse: from children's phone watches to industrial-grade AR glasses, the packaging specifications are very different. We have played a lot on the six-meter-long automated packaging line - retractable robotic arms, modular carriers, intelligent model change systems... Now switching product models is smoother than changing capsules in a coffee machine.
On the day of acceptance, the customer's production manager deliberately mixed products of different sizes. Seeing that the electronic product packaging machine seemed to have eyes, sending smart watches into color boxes, pushing charging compartments into blister trays, and winding data cables into artistic rolls, the operations director from South Korea held up his mobile phone and recorded a short video for half an hour: "If this is sent to the headquarters, those Germans will definitely think we have done movie special effects!"
The symbiotic philosophy of packaging machines and chips
Last week, when I visited the customer in Shenzhen, Lao Zhao mysteriously pulled me to the new production line. The electronic product packaging machine in front of me is packaging flexible screen mobile phones. The posture of the robot arm taking and placing the screen is like dressing a newborn baby. "Since using your equipment, the screen loss rate has dropped to a level that makes me doubt my life." He pointed to the zero defect medal on the honor wall of the workshop, "This credit should be engraved on a tablet for your machine."
As dusk fell, I squatted outside the workshop to smoke. Looking through the glass window at the quietly operating electronic product packaging machine, I suddenly felt that our work was like building a house for electronic components - it must be able to prevent static electricity storms, withstand logistics bumps, and make the unpacking moment feel ceremonial. Perhaps this is the romance of modern manufacturing: using cold metal to protect those precise sparks that carry human wisdom.
Before leaving, the operator born in the 2000s on the production line came jogging over, pointed at our factory's logo on the side of the equipment and asked: "Master, those of you who work on packaging machines must all have a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder?" I was so happy that I almost choked on the smoke - what he said was true, if you don't have a bit of obsession with precision parts, how can you be qualified to serve these electronic components that are more delicate than eyelashes?
