Gigaset Cordless Telephone Production II: Engel Injection Moulding Machine

Since 1941 Siemens has been producing telephones in the small town of Bocholt, Germany. Today there are still 550 workers making cordless telephones for Gigaset, which separated from Siemens in 2010.
In hall 50 Gigaset produces 8.000.000 cordless telephones per year, checks their quality and packages them until they are ready to be send to retailers: At the design centre they form the plastic cases of the phones. At the SMD-department (SMD means surface-mount-device) large machines populate printed circuit boards (the telephone’s electronic core) and at the quality inspection all buttons and functions of the finished phones are being checked.
In this recording you can hear an automated injection moulding machine by the company Engel at the design centre. It is used to produce the plastic covers of the base station of the cordless telephones. The machine melts plastic granulates, which are injected into the moulding form, when the left and the right part of the machine move together. When they move apart again a robotic arm moves forward, picks up the finished plastic cover and drops it onto a conveyor belt, which transports the covers out of the machine and drops them into a large plastic box for collection and further processing.
The dominant sounds in this recording are the ventilators of the machine, the wheezing sound of the robotic arm and the clicking when the finished covers fall into the plastic box. As this recording was made during running production there are other sounds in the background like the voices of staff and the noise of other large machines.
Sound Recordist: Kathinka Engels
Photographer: Inke Pickhardt
Video Recordist: Inke Pickhardt