Loudspeaker Manufacturing and ABB Robots

How loudspeaker manufacturing grew from Magnavox horns and the 1925 Rice and Kellogg cone to robot lines, and where ABB YuMi, GoFa and IRB arms could fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/14/20265 min read

Loudspeaker manufacturing is still more manual than most people expect. A driver is a stack of small parts that have to line up to within a fraction of a millimetre: a magnet and steel plates, a basket, a voice coil wound on a former, a spider, a cone and a surround, all held together with glue. This post follows speakers from horns and hand built drivers to factories that make millions of units, looks at what robots and cobots already do on speaker lines, where ABB robots could fit, and which steps are still hard to automate.

Cross section of a loudspeaker driver showing the cone, surround, spider and the magnet assembly below

A cut open ISOPHON bass driver from 1989 showing the magnet, voice coil gap, spider and cone. Photo: Journey234 / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From Magnavox horns to the moving coil cone

Peter L. Jensen and Edwin Pridham built the first practical moving coil loudspeakers in 1915 in Napa, California. Like earlier speakers, theirs used a horn to amplify a small diaphragm. Telephone companies would not buy them, so the pair turned to radio and public address and called the product Magnavox, Latin for "loud voice". Warren G. Harding spoke through Magnavox equipment during his campaign, and a photo of him as president elect shows a Magnavox horn standing beside him while he speaks into a microphone.

Black and white photo of a man in a suit speaking at a flag draped platform next to a large horn speaker

Warren G. Harding speaks with a Magnavox horn loudspeaker beside him, around 1920 to 1921. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The design almost every speaker still uses was patented in 1925 by Edward W. Kellogg and Chester W. Rice at General Electric's laboratory in Schenectady, New York. They tuned the mechanical parts of their moving coil cone speaker to give a reasonably flat frequency response, which earlier attempts had lacked. The first ones used electromagnets, because strong permanent magnets cost too much. Jensen brought out the first commercial fixed magnet loudspeaker in 1930, but field coil speakers stayed common until lightweight alnico magnets became widely available after the Second World War.

Two men in suits examining a round cone loudspeaker beside a radio cabinet in an old photo

Edward Kellogg and Chester Rice with their cone loudspeaker at General Electric in 1925. Photo: W. T. Meenam / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In the 1930s makers started combining two or three drivers, each covering a different frequency range. James Bullough Lansing helped create the Shearer Horn System for MGM's theatres in 1937, and Altec Lansing introduced its 604 coaxial driver in 1943. In 1946 Lansing left Altec and started the company that became JBL. Volumes grew, yet a driver was still built by people at benches. They centred voice coils, glued spiders and cones in place and checked each unit by ear, and that labour is a large part of why good drivers cost so much.

Long curved wooden stereo speaker cabinet with horn openings at both ends in a living room

A JBL D44000 Paragon, a one piece stereo horn speaker system built from 1957 to 1983. Photo: Magnum5150 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How speaker lines use robots today

JBL was founded in 1946, so 2026 is its 80th anniversary. On 1 October 2026 Korea's Herald Business reported that Samsung Electronics, which owns JBL's parent HARMAN, was running a JBL 80th anniversary sale in Korea through 31 October, with an anniversary exhibition alongside it. JBL says its professional division powers more than 40% of the world's cinemas. Its products have moved from cinema horns to portable Bluetooth speakers since 1946, yet the driver inside still follows the Rice and Kellogg layout: a coil in a magnet gap, pushing a glued cone.

Close up of a black speaker cabinet with a small midrange driver screwed in above a larger woofer

A 130 mm midrange driver above the bass driver in a JBL TI 5000 speaker from the 1990s. Photo: Pittigrilli / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robots now help build that layout. MISCO, a speaker maker in St. Paul, Minnesota, runs five robotic systems that pre-assemble baskets and front plates and fully assemble micro speakers. A camera watches the parts, and when it spots misalignment it stops the robot and alerts staff. Every MISCO unit also gets a 100% end of line test, such as SoundCheck, rub and buzz or frequency testing. Glue is the other big job on a speaker line, and laying beads around a cone or surround is close to the work in our post on robotic gluing and sealing.

Close up of copper wire wound around a round former with plus and minus marks on the paper above

A loudspeaker voice coil after winding, with its positive and negative leads marked. Photo: Ceon Rodrigues / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

We could not find a published ABB loudspeaker line, so what follows describes how existing ABB robots could be used. ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 was built for small parts assembly and could place spiders, coils and dust caps on micro speakers. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot can work beside an assembler, holding a basket while the person centres a coil. A compact IRB 1200 could dispense adhesive or load drivers into a test fixture. Programs like these are usually built and checked first in RobotStudio before they go anywhere near the line.

Two armed white ABB robot working at a bench with small parts while a woman in a lab coat works nearby

ABB's dual arm YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

What comes next for speaker factories

Factories are adding more sensing at each step. MISCO's camera that halts the robot when parts are out of line is one example, and the end of line acoustic test is another. Once more steps are automated, the data from those checks can point to the station that caused a fault, so the problem gets fixed before a whole batch of finished drivers is rejected. Magnets stay awkward because they pull on steel grippers and on each other, so cells that handle them need non magnetic tooling and careful spacing.

Woman guiding a white ABB cobot arm by hand above a wooden work table with boxes

Moving an ABB GoFa cobot arm by hand to teach it a path. Photo: ABB

Homes drive much of the demand. Soundbars, smart speakers, earbuds and phones each contain one or more small drivers, and those are made in very large numbers, which is where robots pay back first. Hi-fi is another story. Many high end makers sell hand built drivers and cabinets as a feature, and their buyers pay for it. For an ordinary home buyer, more automation should mean better matched pairs, since two drivers built on the same robot cell are more likely to sound alike.

Small white ABB six axis robot arm mounted on a red topped pedestal against a white wall

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, launched in 2025, a compact arm for small part work. Photo: ABB

Several problems remain. A robot cell is easier to justify for a million micro speakers than for a few thousand studio monitors. Glue cures over time and its viscosity changes with temperature, so dispensing needs regular tuning and checking. Thin cones and surrounds tear if handled roughly, which calls for soft grippers or vacuum tools. Cobots and fenced cells make safety manageable. People who understand both acoustics and robot programming are harder to find, and many speaker makers employ only a few engineers.

Outdoor concert stage with tall columns of black speakers hanging from metal trusses at sunset

Line array loudspeakers hung from a truss at an open air concert in Dülmen, Germany, 2018. Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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