Battery Cell Stack Assembly Using Transport Sections for Precise Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for producing cell stacks for battery cells are slow, require complex handling, and struggle with positioning accuracy, leading to high production costs and inefficient cycle times.
Innovation Solution
A method involving the cutting and combining of material strips, such as anodes, cathodes, and separators, to form partial stacks, which are then arranged to create a cell stack, using cutting devices and transport mechanisms to ensure precise alignment and continuous production.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If individual sheets are prepared separately and positioned individually in magazines during stack formation, then positioning accuracy can be maintained, but cycle time increases significantly and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The process is segmented into two distinct phases: (1) simultaneous cutting of multiple material strips while maintaining their connection via transport sections, and (2) subsequent separation and stacking of individuated sheets. This segmentation allows high-speed parallel processing during cutting while ensuring precise positioning during the separate stacking phase, thereby resolving the contradiction between productivity and positioning accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
Material strips are pre-cut with transport sections that maintain tensile strength before stacking. This preliminary action enables the strips to be handled and positioned as connected groups, reducing the number of individual positioning operations required and thereby decreasing cycle time while maintaining accuracy through the transport sections.
2Reliability
If multiple process steps are used for preparing, placing, combining, stacking and joining individual sheets, then complete stack formation is achieved, but plant technology complexity increases and cycle time extends
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple process steps are merged into integrated operations. The cutting device simultaneously cuts multiple material strips while maintaining their connection via transport sections. The stacking device then combines cutting and stacking operations in a single integrated process, eliminating separate preparation, placement, and joining steps. This merging reduces plant complexity while maintaining complete stack formation through the coordinated actions of the integrated device.
3Ease of operation
If material strips are cut completely into individual sheets before stacking, then handling is simplified, but positioning accuracy deteriorates and cycle time increases
Solution Approach 1:
Transport sections serve as intermediaries that connect individual material strips during the cutting and stacking process. These transport sections maintain tensile strength, allowing strips to be handled as connected groups (simplifying operation) while the sections themselves provide reference points for precise positioning. The transport sections are subsequently removed after serving their mediating function, leaving cleanly stacked individual sheets.
4Reliability
If lamination process is used to form stacks by laminating cathode and anode sheets with separator films, then stack formation is achieved, but production cost increases due to expensive lamination-capable separator films
Solution Approach 1:
The lamination function is extracted from the separator film material itself. Instead of requiring separator films to have lamination capabilities (which increases material cost), the patent uses separate cutting and stacking operations to form the stack. The separator films are simply cut and stacked with electrode sheets through the integrated stacking device, eliminating the need for expensive lamination-capable materials while achieving complete and reliable stack formation.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for producing a cell stack for battery cells comprises at least the following steps: feeding in at least a first material strip consisting of a first material; making a first cut into at least the first material strip while forming at least one transport section having tensile strength; combining the first material strip with at least a second material strip consisting of a second material, so as to form a partial stack; making a second cut of the partial stack, whereby the transport section is cut open; and arranging at least two partial stacks so as to form a cell stack.