The manufacturing process of lithium-ion battery cells involves rolling two types of electrode sheets together to form individual battery cells. The main steps include winding, welding, casing, and electrolyte injection. Winding involves rolling the two types of electrode sheets into individual battery cells, while welding involves soldering the battery cells onto the battery electrode sheets.
Dekwell Remote I/O has won the favor of customers by meeting the requirements of high precision, high speed and stability in the battery cell manufacturing process.
01. Industry Analysis
The winding process is a core step in the manufacturing of lithium batteries. In this process, key materials such as positive and negative electrode sheets, separators, positive and negative electrode tabs, protective tape, and termination tape are precisely fixed on their respective feeding shafts and wound into cells in a certain order and direction. This process requires a high degree of precision and stability from the production line.
This automated production method not only ensures that the winding process of the battery cell is completed in one go, but also significantly reduces human intervention and damage to the electrode sheets during the process, thereby improving the overall assembly quality of the battery cell.
Cell welding is one of the key processes for connecting the cell electrodes to the cell casing. Currently, cell welding mainly uses methods such as laser welding and ultrasonic welding. Laser welding has advantages such as fast welding speed, high welding quality, and small heat-affected zone; ultrasonic welding has advantages such as high welding efficiency, low welding cost, and no pollution.
02. Pain Points on Site
For mass-produced machines, the most critical challenge is maintaining stable production capacity. How can winding capacity be increased while ensuring yield?
1. Improve speed and stability
Winding speed determines production efficiency, while stability directly affects cell quality. To ensure stability while increasing winding speed, it is necessary to optimize the motion control algorithm of the winding machine to improve its dynamic response and stability.
In this stage of remote I/O, stable communication must be ensured. If the slave I/O connection drops, it will directly affect the machine's production efficiency. The Dekwell FS1 series modules, as an "excellent candidate" meeting the EMC national standard Class A, can safeguard the stable production of the winding machine.
2. Improve on-site construction efficiency
In actual on-site assembly, the fabrication and wiring of equipment account for 30% of the construction time, and the long on-site assembly time is a pain point that urgently needs to be addressed.
Both the Dekwell FS1 and the new RS series modules support E-CON type terminals, which support pre-fabricated wires. Through the piercing type terminals, a series of operations such as wire stripping, wire stripping, and terminal crimping are eliminated, thereby improving assembly efficiency at the operational level.
03. The Deckerwell Plan
In this project, the Dekewell FS series integrated IO and FS1 series quick-connect integrated IO are mainly used in the production line for electrode tab welding, protective glue application and winding of cylindrical battery cells, integrating functions such as visual inspection, hot hole testing, short circuit testing, diameter detection and rounding.
The digital signals input to FS1 are mainly sensor detection signals and relay drive signals. The PLC judges the material progress based on the input signals and outputs corresponding digital signals according to the production process to complete the winding process.
Dekwell modules offer stable communication and fast response, replacing customers' historical solutions with their low cost and high performance, thus winning customer approval.
Main site: Omron NJ series
Applicable process segment: Cylindrical battery cell manufacturing process
Project I/O configuration: Approximately 800 digital signal points, with a standard configuration of 23 units per machine including an FS all-in-one unit and an FS1 quick-connect module.
04. Advantages of Deckerwell Modules
Features of the FS series all-in-one I/O products:
1. Rich bus protocols, supporting mainstream industrial bus protocols such as EtherCAT, PROFINET, DeviceNET, CC-Link, and CC-LinkIE Field Basic;
2. Straight-in terminals for quick installation;
3. The product is small in size and has a compact structure;
4. Stable communication and no data loss;
5. Wide range of applications, primarily in logistics, education, automated stand-alone equipment, and robotic workstations;
Features of RS series multi-functional integrated IO products:
1. Split design, supports hot-swapping, can be matched and combined as needed;
2. Supports multiple joke types and supports both long and short bases;
3. A wide variety of modules are available, and signal types can be freely combined to meet the needs of various application scenarios;
4. Comes with a dust cover and can be installed outside the cabinet;
5. Compact size, saving approximately 60% of installation space;
