Going up close at the Meridian Audio factory (pictures)
A factory tour of the high-end British audio company Meridian.
Geoffrey Morrison
Geoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer about tech and travel for CNET, The New York Times, and other web and print publications. He's also the Editor-at-Large for The Wirecutter. He has written for Sound&Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor-in-Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. He is NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Television/Radio from Ithaca College. His bestselling novel, Undersea, and its sequel, Undersea Atrophia, are available in paperback and digitally on Amazon. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com and on his YouTube channel.
Here's the base circuit board. Several small ones, actually. Onto this, the P&P machine (next slide) places the components that turn this simple board into something that actually does something.
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P&P
The P&P (pick-and-place) machine. This is also called an "SMT component placement system." The reels in the foreground hold components like capacitors, resistors, IC chips, and so on that get placed onto a base circuit board.
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P&P closeup 1
Multiple little robot arms place the components on the board.
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P&P closeup 2
Here's an even closer closeup of the Pick-and-Place machine.
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P&P in standby
You can't open the protective cover of the P&P without it going into standby (for safety reasons, obviously). With the cover open, and the machine static, it's a lot less creepy. Notice the reels of components on the lower right.
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End result
Here you see a completed board (though to be fair, not the same one we started with).
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Optical check
This is the first stage of the multistage QC process: an optical check. The big box on the right (with the tray open), is basically just an ordinary optical scanner (or, if you like, a fancy camera). Software checks the image of the board placed in the tray against a stored master image. It compares dozens and dozens of individual points for variation. This could be as simple as a component placed in the right direction, down to actual serial numbers and product names on chips. If it senses a discrepancy, it flags the item for a check by a human.
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Handmade
Even with the complexities of these circuit boards, there are still some parts that are, for various reasons, better for a person to install.
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Continuity
A additional check is for continuity. The board is placed on this device (this one is a demo, the real one is a machine), and it checks to make sure all the electrical connections are working. Check out the next slide for the bottom, it's really cool. Also, check out this video to see the machine in action.
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WIRES!
This is the underside of the continuity checker you saw in the last slide. So many wires.
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Performance testing
The final stage in QC testing is actual performance testing. After running in the board (soaking), for 24 to 72 hours, the performance is checked against a reference.
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USB DAC
The Explorer DAC (digital-to-analog converter), which Steve Guttenberg checked out, is entirely made in this factory.
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Speaker cutaway
Meridian makes speakers, too. Here's a cutaway of one of the towers. In addition to incredibly rigid wood layers, you should be able to make out a thin piece of metal in the middle of the sandwich. Solid.
