Optimized battery cell production with PC-based control

When it comes to manufacturing individualized products in a quantity-oriented and space-optimized manner, innovative production concepts are essential. These challenges can be solved efficiently with the XTS and XPlanar intelligent transport systems, as well as with the PC-based control technology from Beckhoff as a whole. Both of these transport systems are ideal for use in applications including battery manufacturing and electric motor production.

New impetus for e-mobility manufacturing

The automotive industry is currently undergoing a structural change that is set to take some time to complete, with digitalization, Industrie 4.0, automation, and networking all changing the face of production processes and plants. PC- and EtherCAT-based control technology from Beckhoff has always offered decisive competitive advantages for a sustainable, fast, and open-technology transformation of this future-oriented approach to plant automation. The use of industry and IT standards and components for cloud communication and big data make the PC-based control platform ideal for end-to-end networking and the implementation of Industrie 4.0 concepts.

The challenges and opportunities here are manifold and cover not only the vehicles themselves, but to a large extent also the production plants in the field of e-mobility. As Jörg Rottkord, Industry Manager Automotive at Beckhoff, describes: “Beckhoff supplies all the key control elements for the production and assembly of typical automotive components. In addition to body construction, material flow, and painting, this notably applies to the areas of powertrain and battery cell production. In particular, the focus on alternative drive types such as e-mobility and fuel cell technology is generating immense market demand for our components and solutions. In addition to production, this also includes the measurement and testing functions of the components produced. Examples of this are the aging test and the analysis for battery cells after their production. The entire functionality of the Beckhoff modular automation toolkit is typically used, from a wide range of CPU variants and modules for EtherCAT-based data acquisition to the functional safety of the production machines and plants. It also includes automated versioning of application code, and tool chains for continuous application improvement of the TwinCAT control algorithms in use. The consistent use of Beckhoff control technology increases production capacity, product quality and, above all, scalability for possible future expansions of production facilities. This is an approach that more and more innovative automotive companies are taking.”