In the booming development of the electric vehicle market, the power battery market competition is showing a concentration of market leaders and the strongest will remain strong.
With the entry of foreign competitors, the downstream automobile manufacturers' cost pushback and mutual checks and balances game, as well as the iterative upgrading process of battery technology, battery manufacturers start from the "core". They actively adopt advanced automation and digital technology for a much-needed transformation and upgrading, which is the feasible way to gain future advantages.
For the power battery of an electric vehicle, it is necessary to complete a set of standard processes from the cell to the module to the battery pack before it can be used in the car.
The whole set of production process is quite complicated. But to put it into simple terms: it mainly covers the stage of mixing and coating for electrode production (front part), the stage of winding and injecting for cell synthesis (middle part), and the stage of packaging and testing for packaging (back part).
The lithium equipment corresponding to the front process mainly includes vacuum mixer, coating machine, roller press, etc., while the middle process mainly includes the cutting machine, winding machine, stacking machine, liquid injection machine and more. The latter process deals with formation machine, capacity dividing and testing equipment, process storage and logistics automation, and the pack automation equipment at the back.
Let us take a proper look at how Balluff assists with automating and digitizing the transformation of battery production with some key production equipment and processes:
High Precision Rolling
The aluminum foil, with both anode and cathode materials, is lapped by a rotating roller with a pressure of about 50 tons to tighten the coated material, increase the energy density, and ensure the thickness consistency on the one hand, and to further control dust and humidity on the other hand. This process requires a rolling width of 300 to 1,100 mm, a rolling speed of 10 to 120 m/min and a thickness accuracy of ±1.5 microns.
For this purpose, Balluff offers solutions based on IO-LINK communication technology, ranging from fiber optic photoelectric sensors, network modules to industrial Ethernet cables. In addition, for the high precision required in the roll pressing process, Balluff offers high-resolution industrial cameras BVS to check the width and alignment of the foils.
Winding and laminating
After slitting and drying the battery cells, the method of making cells can be divided into stacked and wound. This process requires a stacking accuracy within ±0.1 mm, a winding speed of about 60 revolutions per minute, a maximum linear speed of 2,500 mm/s and tension fluctuations of less than 4%.
For such applications, Balluff offers a high-resolution BLA optical strip sensor for precise web edge control, diameter and thickness measurement, and Safety-over-IO-Link instead of AS-i communication, which reduces cabling and bus nodes and makes integration into the IO-Link network easier.
Cell Assembly
Once the core prototype has been wound, the efficient and stable assembly of the cores is an extremely important part of the mass production of the cores, which is divided into a series of processes such as core insertion, core soldering, core grooving, core filling, core capping, core sealing, and core cleaning and jacketing.
The Balluff BVS vision sensors guide the welding position for fast high-quality welding processes. The Balluff BIS identification system is used for reliable tracking of the parts pallets in the core assembly process. The distributed IO-Link master-based connection of sensors, RFID and actuators reduce the cost of the overall cell assembly line and increase intelligent communication capabilities.
In fact, during the entire series of electrode production, cell assembly, chemical encapsulation and PACK processes, Balluff, with its world-leading sensor detection technology and corresponding IO-Link digital communication technology, can create efficient, reliable and low-cost automation solutions for almost all kinds of process equipment and production lines of power batteries. Thus, Balluff can outline a blueprint of intelligent manufacturing for power battery manufacturers.
