Teardown Process:
- Unscrewed plastic casing from headband
- Ripped leather from arm and removed foam pads
- Used screwdriver to pry open plastic casing and removed wires
- Broke yoke off the head band with shears and hands
- Pried ear pads off with screwdriver
- Pried off plastic bowl from ear pads with screwdriver
- Unscrewed circuitry from ear pad casing
- Removed buttons from ear pad casing
- Pushed magnets out of casing with screwdriver
- Removed diaphragms from casing
- Removed circuit board from casing with LED light, auxiliary jack, micro-USB input
- Removed 1.48wH battery
Components and Manufacturing Process:
- Speaker covers
- Materials: Plastic
- Manufacturing Process: Injection molding machine, stamp machine for applying branding. Pneumatic tool forces two halves of speaker cover together. Speaker unit is inserted into plastic housing by technician. Technician solders two wires to speaker.
- Ear Pads
- Materials: Foam, cotton, leather, mesh
- Headband
- Materials: Leather, plastic, foam
- Manufacturing Process: Technician threads wires through headband, passing audio from left speaker to right, adjustable strap is attached.
- Lithium Ion Battery
- Materials: Copper, Lithium Polymer, Aluminum
- Manufacturing Process: mix electrode materials, combine with conductive binding agent to create slurry, coat slurry over copper and aluminum coils, dry to remove solvents and moisture, clean, cut, vacuum oven treatment, cell assembly, charging/decharging, finishing and quality control
- Speakers
- Materials: Plastic, plastic sheet, copper, magnet, foam, solder
- Manufacturing Process: Specialized machine that spins thin, copper wire around a cylinder to create a diaphragm that will vibrate and create sound. Press applies heat and pressure to a plastic membrane to create a wide audio frequency range, technician punches out the molded shape, then applies glue to the mold. Technician attaches copper diaphragm to plastic mold. UV light activates glue to seal mold to diaphragm.
- Circuit boards
- Materials: Phenolic paper, solder, aluminum, copper, plastic
- Manufacturing Process: Soldering paste in stencil, spreads tin-lead alloy, printing blades spread soldering paste on to stencil, install surface wiring elements with rapid placing machine (8,000 parts per hour!), convection oven to solder parts to card, manual hand placement of priority parts, metallic placement cards soldered to card in a bath of molten tin-lead alloy, electrical test on bed of electrified pegs, final computer-aided operating test to test functional operation.
- Screws
- Materials: Steel
Interesting Design Choices:
- The buttons on the headphones have a satisfying tactile click. The designers’ intention was to create immediate feedback to the user that the device has received to their input.
- The speaker in the plastic casing has a thin, plastic film layer that vibrates to establish audio frequency range.