May 24, 2021, Changzhou – Comau recently participated at EV Engineering 2021, held in Changzhou May 13-14, where the industrial automation and electrification leader displayed a full range of innovative products and design solutions for advancing the development of e-vehicle and battery manufacturing. During the event, Wang Junwu, Comau China Head of Powertrain Assembly Engineering Excellence, delivered a speech as part of the EV Battery Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Forum. Focusing on battery manufacturing and trends resulting from process innovation, he explained how Comau works together with new energy vehicle manufacturers to support them from innovation to profitability.
Comau offers a comprehensive powertrain portfolio that fully covers traditional production needs for everything from engines to transmissions, and has already delivered more than 200 powertrain assembly lines worldwide. Now, the company is integrating flexible, standardized, modular and scalable solutions to meet the latest requirements and challenges of the electric vehicle industry. With smart and flexible manufacturing processes for battery, motor and transmission assembly, in addition to special machining centers and body assembly systems, Comau is powering the move towards digital manufacturing by providing full support from product design to production start-up. In fact, as of today, the company has developed and installed several dozen battery module, pack, electric cell and e-drive production lines around the world.
During the show, Comau displayed its Smart Laser Welding Station. In addition to a standardized design, the welding trajectory is controlled through an automation code generated by the Comau PRO platform, which is flexible and easy to encode. The station also features the Comau Lhyte hybrid laser, where one laser can have two laser waves (semiconductor and optional fiber or hybrid laser) to fit a variety of welding applications, such as soft or hard lug welding, hard short veneer welding, and even motor lug welding.
Comau’s flexible, battery module product, Blue Box, adopts a standardized and easily reconfigurable design, which can be widely used in battery module assembly, pick and place, gluing, welding, tightening and testing stations.
Similarly, the Comau High Speed Conveyer for battery modules utilizes the Comau SmartCube flexible platform. The fixed section servo-driven synchronous conveyer system is widely applied in the pretreatment of prismatic and pouch electric cells and delivers high speed and high positioning accuracy within a compact, flexible, and highly productive system.
Comau’s intelligent manufacturing approach combines flexibility, modularity and re-configurability to help customers to improve their production efficiency, achieve large-scale mass production and increase their profitability.