Consumers spend some $1 billion to buy 2 billion lightbulbs each year in the U.S. That’s more than 6 million every day. High-speed automated assembly is the only way to meet that kind of volume.
However, the need for speed doesn’t mean that assemblers can handle bulbs in the same way they handle, say, screws or plastic caps. Glass is fragile. Indeed, the glass in a typical incandescent lightbulb is just 0.6 millimeter thick. That’s twice as thick as an eggshell, but thinner than a good wine glass.