Info Tech Apple cranks out millions of iPhones every quarter, but have you ever wondered what happens to all those devices when they reach the end of their lives? Many of them end up in landfills with other mobile devices that have outlived their usefulness, but some will be recycled. Apple recently decided to take iPhone recycling seriously and the result is Liam. No, Liam is not a factory worker or engineer. Liam is a robot with 29 arms built for the purpose of tearing old iPhones down at breakneck speed.
While some steps in the construction of an iPhone are done by machines, much of the process is handled by human assembly line workers. In fact, Foxconn recently had to admit that it’s ongoing efforts to develop an assembly robot had hit a rough patch. The robot arms simply aren’t accurate enough to put an iPhone together. However, after three years of work in secret, Apple engineers have designed one that’s able to take them apart.
The video posted by Apple doesn’t make it entirely apparent, but Liam is a huge robot. It’s actually more of a reverse assembly line with 29 individual arms, each tasked with holding the phone or liberating different components from the chassis. As many as 40 phones can be queued up on the conveyor belt that feeds Liam. It all starts with an arm that pulls the screen assembly off so a camera can scan the device and figure out which model it is. This is important as the location of screws and components can change from one generation to the next.
Before all the bits and pieces are grabbed by Liam’s multitude of robotic arms, the battery is removed. Even a long unplugged lithium-ion battery can be dangerous if it’s damaged during the disassembly process. Apple says that Liam can disassemble 350 iPhones per hour (1.2 million per year), which is thanks to its ability to multitask. At some stations, there may be more than one arm working to remove screws and pull out circuit boards. That’s a lot of phones, and Liam doesn’t even have to work weekends.
The goal is to get all the useful materials out of an iPhone as efficiently as possible. Gold, copper, cobalt, and other minerals are all found in phones. If you just throw away an old phone, someone has to mine more minerals out of the ground to build new ones. Sometimes those minerals are mined or sold under suspicious circumstances, and then there’s the environmental impact of increased mining. Recycled materials come with fewer ethical concerns, but it can cut costs too.
Apple is looking to increase Liam’s supply of old iPhones to take apart with a new recycling program called Apple Renew. You can send your old Apple devices in to be recycled and you’ll get a gift card back with the value of the device, assuming it has any.