New MacBook Manufacturing Process

By Sam Symons
in Apple (macOS)

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Grand Master

capr

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If it's true, it means that it's going to be a bitch to replace a hard drive or add RAM. =/

you never know, maybe they will come up with a slick way to lift the keyboard and put stuff in. back in the day we used to have to take thekeyboard apart manually for this. but maybe they will make it be like a flappy thing like the lid.

I have personally never dropped my laptop and expected it to be just fine... and hte poeple who do drop it every 10 minutes maybe you should find another solution. making the case stronger doesnt mean the hd inside isn't gonna scratch itself to pieces.

Grand Master

Sam Symons Veteran

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Yeah, I'd say that access would be under the keyboard. And just because it doesn't need screws, doesn't mean it won't have them ;) Maybe 4 under the keyboard and that's all. I'm a Windows user, don't own one Mac, never have, but I'm still eager to see what Steve brings out on the 14th (if rumors are true, of course).

Grand Master

Linkinfamous

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On a notebook computer? I've never seen one.

It's a very common manufacturing method. They're using it for exactly what it's intended for (Machining out chunks of metal), and it's a little silly how everyone has to call everything Apple does 'innovative', especially when it's clearly not.

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giga Veteran

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It's a very common manufacturing method. They're using it for exactly what it's intended for (Machining out chunks of metal), and it's a little silly how everyone has to call everything Apple does 'innovative', especially when it's clearly not.

Really? Which notebook is carved out of a block of aluminum with a one shell seamless design?

Grand Master

BajiRav

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Really? Which notebook is carved out of a block of aluminum with a one shell seamless design?

Come on giga, are you really buying into the "innovative" part? All I can see is a lot of wastage due to "carving". :no:

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Edrick Smith

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I'm missing something how does this allow them not to use screws and create a seamless design? So they take a rectangle chunk of aluminum and carve the body out. So now you have the bottom pice just as before you have to screw down the motherboard and CD-Drive and Harddrive and the top cover with the keyboard and all the rest of the stuff.

So where does this seamless screwless innovating construction come in?

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giga Veteran

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Come on giga, are you really buying into the "innovative" part? All I can see is a lot of wastage due to "carving". :no:

I didn't say anything about innovation--i'm just saying what this article is proposing hasn't been done in a notebook before.

Aluminum is easily recyclable.

Grand Master

PyX

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are you really buying into the "innovative" part?
What advantages are there to manufacturing with 3D laser and water jet cutting?

* Carving out of aluminum eliminates the need to bend the metal and create weak spots or microfolds and rifts.

* There are no seams in the final product, so it is smooth.

* Screws aren?t needed to tie the products together.

* The shell is one piece of metal so it is super light, super strong and super cheap.

* You can be a whole lot more creative with the design if you don't have to machine it.

So these are disadvantages in the end? o_O

I'm not following you. Aluminum is never wasted, it's like a sheet of paper. There's always something to do with it.

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CelticWhisper

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I wouldn't worry much about wastage - aluminum is easy to recover during manufacturing and raw-materials suppliers buy it back at about USD $1.30/lb. I'm the IT manager in a company that manufactures foodservice products from aluminum and the reclamation system we have in our factory is quite impressive. The portions of the sheet aluminum that don't get made into product are actually vacuumed up through a series of tubes (lol Ted Stevens) that run along the ceiling and dropped into balers that pack it together for sale back to the refineries that produce the original raw material that we buy. Of course, it's going to be a different system at Apple since they're working with blocks whereas we're working with rolls of sheet metal, but still, they just need a means to get the leftovers from the cutting area to a reclamation area and from that point there should be little difference.

There may be a lot of each block wasted in the cutting/etching/carving step, but that will be quickly and easily recovered, sent back to the refinery, and made into new blocks (many of which are probably going to wind up right back at Apple's factory). So environmentally speaking, it should have very little adverse impact.

Grand Master

Sam Symons Veteran

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I wouldn't worry much about wastage - aluminum is easy to recover during manufacturing and raw-materials suppliers buy it back at about USD $1.30/lb. I'm the IT manager in a company that manufactures foodservice products from aluminum and the reclamation system we have in our factory is quite impressive. The portions of the sheet aluminum that don't get made into product are actually vacuumed up through a series of tubes (lol Ted Stevens) that run along the ceiling and dropped into balers that pack it together for sale back to the refineries that produce the original raw material that we buy. Of course, it's going to be a different system at Apple since they're working with blocks whereas we're working with rolls of sheet metal, but still, they just need a means to get the leftovers from the cutting area to a reclamation area and from that point there should be little difference.

There may be a lot of each block wasted in the cutting/etching/carving step, but that will be quickly and easily recovered, sent back to the refinery, and made into new blocks (many of which are probably going to wind up right back at Apple's factory). So environmentally speaking, it should have very little adverse impact.

Well said. That should hopefully put an end to any concerns :)

Also,

Businessweek spoke to some experts about the feasibility of the rumors that Apple will be introducing a new manufacturing process and bringing notebook manufacturing in-house.

iSuppli analyst Kevin Keller believes that while short term costs would rise, there could be a savings over time:

"If you're working with one single unit of metal, you're reducing a lot of the materials costs and also a lot of labor time on assembly"

If true, the results could "be unlike anything else on the market in appearance and design" with elimination of screws and seams. Still, it's unclear if Apple could overcome the fact that such a process is quite time-intensive, and scale it enough for laptop production.

As well, the possibility of Apple investing in its own factories to assemble notebooks is seen as a very expensive and risky move and there appears to be no current evidence that Apple has embarked on such a project.

"I'd be shocked if they started doing any of their own assembly," says Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore. "That's the kind of drastic step that would hurt profits. I'm just not sure what the advantages would be."

Meanwhile, CNet's Adam Richardson, an industrial designer, dismisses some of the rumors claiming that Apple has been using both laser and waterjet methods for quite sometime. He reports that the process described by 9to5mac as applied to a notebook-sized device would be much more expensive than traditional manufacturing and feels it's "unlikely that it will literally be a hollowed out block of aluminum".

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con...8106_898999.htm

(actually it's from MacRumors, but that's the article it's based on)

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