High throughput feeding of battery electrode sheets: accuracy vs. throughput vs. electrode-damage

Abstract

In battery production, excessive throughput maximization of electrode-separator-composite assembly suffers from loss of accuracy and increased damage likelihood. In stacked battery cell designs, this calls for high throughput feeding with high accuracy and low damage. This article analyses robot-based handling, in particular their throughput, feeding accuracy, and damage-free handling. This serves as a comparison reference for the rotary-feeding mechanism, which is analysed afterwards. In this context, scenarios of gripping, stack separation and alignment are introduced and investigated experimentally. These experiments indicate that 160% feeding throughput compared to conventional pick-and-place has been achieved at the same accuracy and without damages.