Consumer Battery Assembly - Electrode Handling for Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs
DMW Automation engineers and staff personnel designed custom automated equipment to pick positive and negative hybrid automobile battery electrodes from pre-packaged magazines and place them onto conveyance systems.
Overview
- Location: Midwest
- Industry: Automotive
- Products/Services: Hybrid Vehicle Battery Assembly
- Primary SIC Code: 3272
- Annual Sales: $8 million
- Technology: Indexing
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| Electrode pick & place mechanism. |
Situation
A hybrid vehicle battery manufacturer approached DMW Automation to develop custom automated equipment to assemble battery packs for hybrid auto batteries.
This equipment was to replace manual operations thus gaining output speed, and minimizing down time while improving quality by not placing double electrodes on the conveyor. A double electrode would result in a failed battery pack that could not be detected until later in the manufacturing process, resulting in costly rework.
The equipment was to precisely pick and place, positive and negative battery electrodes at 45 parts per minute onto a conveyor belt. The electrodes needed to be removed from magazine bundles, singulated, and positioned on a conveyor line that fed an automated assembly operation.
The automated solution had to make sure only one electrode was selected and picked each time, and that the electrode not be damaged in the process.
Action
DMW Automation personnel traveled to the customer’s location to evaluate and examine the pilot plant facility and the electrodes to be handled and to discuss the handling issues.
Our engineers designed the new servomotor-driven product handling pick and place mechanisms, modifying proven techniques previously developed by DMW in the cylindrical battery assembly field. These pick and place mechanisms were then integrated into multiple automated machines.
After fabrication and assembly, we conducted Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) with the customer present and received their approval to ship the equipment. We shipped and installed the equipment on site and integrated it with the existing conveyor systems.
We eventually supplied multiple indexing machines to handle electrodes for battery packs for hybrid vehicles ranging in size from 50mm to 90mm wide. We also supplied other types of automation to the same customer.
Typical operations performed included:
- Electrode pick and place
- Electrode sorting
- Positive and negative electrode combining, and
- Battery pack insertion into cases
Results
Our fully automated electrode handling equipment eliminated 6 manual operations, minimized down time due to human errors, andvirtually eliminated quality issues that had resulted from double electrodes.
For more information about DMW Automation’s custom automation equipment and systems services, please call us at 847-437-0665 or email us at sales@dmwautomation.com.
