Dongguan Maowei Electronics: leading the 5G era with production automation of mobile phone midboard

With the 5G mobile phones appear on the market sporadically, the 5G is finally on the horizon. As the industrial projection indicates, the scale-up development for 5G terminal devices will arrive in the second half of 2020. Mobile phones and broad range of end-products are expected to experience an explosive growth. To get ready for the large-scale production of 5G terminals, the peripheral manufacturers have started to make the move to build automated production lines in 2019.

In May of 2019, Dongguan Maowei Electronics Co., Ltd. purchased from Yizumi more than ten sets of DM300H die-casting machine with 3 peripheral robots for the production of 4G and 5G midboards. As a company specialized in mobile phone midboard die-casting products, Maowei Electronics has a full range of proven process from product development, mold making, die-casting, and CNC machining. Now, Maowei Electronics has reached strategic cooperation agreement with VIVO, OPPO, and other well-known domestic brands and is ready for mass production following brand owners’ 5G mobile phone launch schedule.

To meet the production needs for 5G mobile phone midboard, the technical team of Yizumi Robot & Automation Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. did in-depth study of the product technology and production process, continuously optimized the associated programs to improve the level of automation and productivity, helping Maowei Electronics to take the lead in the 5G era.

According to Maowei Electronics’ product requirement, Yizumi provided the solution with 3 servo robots (ladler, sprayer, extractor) for fully automated production. Compared to manual operation, the fully automatic production plan is more stable with higher yield and productivity which saves investment in labor cost.

In the automated production process of mobile phone midboard, spraying is one of the important steps. Too much spray will darken or leave watermark on the product surface; on the other hand, insufficient spray will make it hard to release the product from the mold and cause damage mark to the product.

More crucially, for the ultra thin-walled 5G mobile phone midboard with a thickness of about 0.3mm, the correct amount of spray is essential to ensure the product yield. The sprayer must be controlled individually with the spray volume regulated in a wide range. The nozzle should spray vertically onto the mold surface and cover the entire product; in term of the time duration of the spraying, spray in a sweeping motion without stopping on flat surface where there is no ejector; when it has to make a stop around places that have ejectors, edge grooves or bumps, do not stay for too long. In general, it should be kept around 1.2S.

In comparison with ordinary spray robots that can flexibly complete spraying in all directions, servo sprayer is better at dealing with complex coating process over this type of flat membrane components. Specially designed nozzle can handle all kinds of molds. It can not only effectively overcome dead ends in any direction to achieve accurate and efficient spray effect but also maintain the operation stability for an extended period of time.

Through six months of use, the performance of the servo sprayer is well recognized by Maowei Electronics and named as the “special sprayer for mobile phone midboard”.

Facing the upcoming 5G mobile phone scale-up development, Maowei Electronics is pursuing higher production efficiency and yield for a leading position in the competition of 5G mobile phone commercialization. For this purpose, the technical team from Yizumi Robotics successfully raises the original working pace of the 3 servo robots by more than 20% through computation and optimization, while maintaining a production yield higher than 99%.

More efficient and stable equipment ensures a higher output. Relying on its expertise in equipment integration, Yizumi continues to deliver high precision equipment to the customers, support customers’ process parameters, improve the productivity of die-casting products, and strive to achieve a fully automated intelligent manufacturing.