Beyerdynamic GmbH & Co. KG

01 the short story

In order to increase productivity and at the same time improve the quality of their audio equipment, Beyerdynamic relies on collaborative robots in the coating of its loudspeaker membranes. For automation the process was firstly divided into two parts, handling and spraying. In a pick and place application, a ur5 robot with an integrated Robotiq wrist camera and a Robotiq 2-finger gripper places a welded headphone loudspeaker on a rotary motor. A ur3 with an integrated spray gun then takes over the spraying process and coats the membrane by spraying it with a dispersion medium. The use of cobots has enabled productivity to be increased by 50 percent at this point in the production process while significantly improving quality at the same time.

02 the challenge

As a long-established company, which also produces mainly in Germany, beyerdynamic was faced with the challenge of increasing productivity by 50 percent without neglecting the quality standards of their brand while retaining the same capacity with regard to production resources. However, this is not easily possible in the case of particularly delicate work steps, which are traditionally carried out by hand, without endangering process stability. For example, the membranes of the loudspeakers have to be refined at one point within the production sequence by coating them with a dispersion medium. Up to the automation stage, three employees, who applied the medium to the membrane by hand with a brush, were responsible for this process. “Of course, it is impossible for humans to paint evenly over a long period of time. At some point, one brushstroke becomes thicker and another thinner. Accordingly, our membranes showed strong fluctuations with regard to their quality" says Jörg Lang, production engineer at beyerdynamic.

03 the solution

After UR robots had long convinced beyerdynamic in quality control applications, the company decided to also use the tried and tested cobots in the production area. Today two collaborative robots from Universal Robots, a UR3 and a UR5, support the employees in the coating of the loudspeaker membranes. An employee places a welded headphone speaker on a pre-defined area representing the camera's field of view integrated into the robot arm. With the help of a Robotiq Wrist Camera and a Robotiq 2-finger gripper, a UR5 robot arm picks up the loudspeaker and places it on a rotary motor. A UR3 with an integrated spray gun then takes over the spraying process and coats the membrane by applying the dispersion medium. The UR5 then uses the Robotiq gripper to place the coated loudspeaker on a tray which, as soon as it is fully loaded with workpieces, is automatically pushed on by the robot.

The use of robots has increased productivity by 50 percent at this specific point in the production process, while at the same time improving product quality. In addition to the unbeatable price-performance ratio, Peter Härtel, Head of Strategic Operations and Quality at beyerdynamic, was particularly impressed by the ease of use and compatibility of the robot arms: "Thanks to the intuitive control interface, our employees can quickly learn to operate the robots themselves. The camera and gripper from Robotiq were also quickly installed and seamlessly usable via the software and programming environment. Thanks to this Plug&Play integration between the UR robot arm and the Robotiq supplies, our pilot project could be implemented in no time at all." As part of an ongoing 4-year plan, beyerdynamic plans to successively implement additional collaborative robots into other production processes to further support their  employees