Last time we said, we flew more than 10000 kilometers to Aachen, Germany, just to see how the PHILPS xenon lamp, the best xenon lamp, was made at present, XV+. After visiting the complete assembly line, the domestic tyrant boss marvel at this highly automated factory.
To what extent does PHILPS's factory automation in Aachen go? From the intuitive experience, in the workshop we visited, only a few employees could be seen. In terms of data, every employee here produces 140 thousand products a year. If there is no highly automated assembly line, it is difficult to achieve such a production efficiency.

PHILPS Automotive Lighting Factory Operations Director J rgen Melzer first introduced the sentence is: "this factory is PHILPS's own manufacturing line."
In order to build a little car light, do not hesitate to spend their own R & D, design, manufacture of assembly lines and factories? What is this for?
As a matter of fact, it was forced.
I think we've all heard about the high wages of germans. In Aachen, the per capita annual salary reached 52 thousand euros. In fact, engineers, especially car related engineers, earn much more than this level, approaching 60 thousand euros. Under such a high human cost, it is a more economical choice to invest heavily in the construction of a factory with fewer people.

Of course, one of the most important reasons for choosing your own production line is the production characteristics of xenon headlights. Not only in the production of the lamp section need to isolate the air, but also filled with high pressure gas and metal salt, lamp and lamp holder combination is also not bad.
In this technical requirements, the accuracy of the machine is much higher than that of artificial. And PHILPS's own manufacturing line can ensure productivity and accuracy, but also to ensure the capacity and product quality.

So before we visited the assembly line, we were repeatedly told not to take pictures and take pictures outside the permitted area, because it might involve trade secrets. Once the violation of the provisions of the tour, the consequences will be very serious.

Before entering the factory, each of us wore red protective clothing, protective shoes and protective glasses specially for visitors. In order to keep the factory clean as well as to protect the safety of our visitors.
Even if only in the pipeline section which can visit and understand in detail, I still feel a rigorous and fluent mechanical beauty.
Different from the assembly line of the automobile, the production line is very high because of the great quantity of the products. The whole workshop is also immersed in a fast-paced mechanical sonata. Of course, there are lots of interesting places, for example, a pipeline called glove area.

The first completely guess what it is used to know, after listening to the director, because it is filled with inert gas, so it is necessary to manually adjust the time, only through the rubber gloves to operate.

In the glove zone, xenon lamp, also known as foam are mounted on the base. The loading on the base of the next bubble into the machine by the array hand, lit test. In this part of the test is not a bubble of bad color, white and so on.

Because xenon lamp working principle is to use 23000V high voltage breakdown xenon, and lead to xenon between two electrodes to form arc light, so xenon tube gas filling is a very exquisite thing.
Out of the shop, we see a storage tank of liquid nitrogen, and in the process of condensation of xenon, which reached 200 degrees below zero low temperature of liquid nitrogen will be used for cooling treatment. It reminds me of the scene where T1000 was shattered by liquid nitrogen in the movie "ultimate 2" when I was a kid.

And the part that fascinates me most about the factory is the assembly line of the lamp holder. Before after high pressure, low temperature and vacuum temper the bulb here combined with a lamp holder, but also can not have the slightest deviation.

After the final conversion testing, forming the xenon bulbs will put into the tray, the tray by the movement of the machine, after which the line is the last link, which is the only need workers to participate in the link, is with the naked eye through the ultraviolet lamp bulb to identify whether there is a problem.

So the equipment working here is extremely complex, just to study the angle of the lamp tube and the lamp holder in combination, we can see the mechanical devices with different directions and different functions.
Until I left this machine, I didn't know the ins and outs of the production process, but I paid tribute to the PHILPS engineers who designed and built the machine.

And what we're seeing is just a tiny fraction of the PHILPS factory in Aachen. In this huge factory that covers 15 football fields, the number of products produced every year is 150 million, and only 4000 trucks are transported each year. The xenon lamps produced here are sent around the world, and these lamps show German precision and high quality without exception.
So, when we visited the entire PHILPS xenon lamp assembly line, the company is full of respect. Not only because the assembly line of the factory was designed and made by PHILPS himself, it was enough to see how astonishing the depth of PHILPS's technology reached. And for a seemingly simple xenon lamp, PHILPS is still able to maximize every detail in the most technical way.