Meet Daisy, the magical robot who recycles iPhones

© Apple

This two-part report retraces the journey of an old iPhone, from its delivery by the customer to the Apple Store to its exit from the factory after passing through Daisy, Apple's disassembly robot. Episode 2: the discovery of Daisy, Apple's magical robot.

A week after our visit to the Apple Store on the Champs-Elysées, we left for Breda, a small industrial town located on the outskirts of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. A few hours on the train and a short Tesla ride later, Apple opens the doors to the factory housing Daisy, its magical iPhone disassembly robot.

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Daisy is the fruit of several years of work. Originally, this unique disassembly robot was called Liam 1.0. Born in 2012, this first machine disassembled an iPhone 5 in 12 minutes. In 2015, Liam 2.0 reduced this time to 11 seconds but required too much space in the factory and, above all, could only process eight components of the iPhone 6.

Convinced of being able to reinvent iPhone recycling, Apple engineers will only take three more years to create Daisy. In 2018, this new robot, which stretches approximately 10 meters long and 5 meters wide, is supervised by four technicians. It can disassemble 29 iPhone models, from iPhone 5 to iPhone 14, in just 18 seconds.< /p>

Selective sorting

© Apple

© Apple

To achieve this feat, Daisy does not unscrew: she breaks, drills, scrapes, compresses and sorts. Its disassembly process is divided into four stages:

• from the recovery bin, a first arm places the iPhone to remove the screen
• the phone then passes through a machine which removes the batteries by a cooling process at -80°C. A technician collects the battery, tapes it and places it in a bin.
• the iPhone is then drilled and then scraped to recover the components.
• motherboard, photo sensors, speakers, antenna… everything then passes onto a belt then a vibrating wheel to separate the wheat from the chaff. This step is crucial since it allows Apple to recover healthier components than those of the traditional circuit.

This is the whole point of this industry. Traditional recycling, although virtuous, has its limits, particularly during the sorting stage. Impurities or mixing of parts (for example, certain screws can slip into a batch of aluminum parts) can degrade the quality of the materials recovered. It is therefore complicated for Apple to find parts that meet its standards and achieve its carbon neutrality objectives.

© Apple

The company therefore developed other robots to help Daisy. Dave dismantles the Taptic engines to extract rare earths, tungsten and steel. Taz is a machine capable of recovering rare earths from magnets, usually a deadweight loss for classic recycling robots.

© Apple

Thanks to this system, Apple's progress in reducing its carbon footprint has accelerated. In 2022, 20% of products sold contained recycled components. Apple wants to reach 100% by 2030. A major challenge but not impossible. The latest MacBook Air, for example, is made from 50% recycled materials. 100% rare earth elements in the magnets are recycled, as well as 100% copper in the motherboard. As for the packaging, it is made up of 99% fibers in order to eliminate all use of plastic by 2025.

Open to all

© Apple

To continue this good momentum, Apple therefore needs Daisy and our old iPhones. To date, Apple is not exploiting the full potential of Daisy. The two robots (the one in Breda and another in Texas) are running at 50% of their maximum capacity: the one we visited for the European models, the one in Texas for North America. Asia and South America still follow a classic path. Daisy can, however, process 1.2 million devices per year.

Franck Lenderik, director of environmental initiatives at Apple, explains that “the technology is open to researchers and other technology giants electronic, free of charge, under license”. Concretely, Daisy could also be used to disassemble other devices, Headed or not. It remains to be seen whether the industry will respond to this outstretched robotic arm.

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