With electric vehicles slowly but surely pushing fuel-powered vehicles out of the market, the industry desperately calls for enhanced safety standards for power batteries. However, this poses new challenges in maintaining quality control for conventional lithium batteries. In response, LEAD has launched the world’s first high-speed industrial CT scanner for the lithium cell industry. Thanks to LEAD's expertise as the world’s largest lithium-cell equipment manufacturer, this new technology will help to improve the safety of new energy vehicles through more accurate quality inspection.
LEAD's inline industrial CT impresses with top-level results
Customers have already taken notice of LEAD equipment’s outstanding performance, and for valid reasons:
Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility: < 10%
Cell inspection error rate: < 0.1%
Scanning time for one lithium cell: ≤ 4 sec.
Single-station detection capacity: 12 PPM
Comprehensive diagnostic procedures lead to decreased waste and improved efficiency, resulting in substantial cost savings when compared to X-ray inspections. Specifically, in a production line with 2 GWh of LFP 590 stacked cells, LEAD's industrial CT system can yield annual savings of at least €2 million.
Where CT Beats X-rays
While it’s common to use high-precision cameras for the X-ray inspection of cells and modules, they are limited in their ability to detect manufacturing defects below the surface. As a result, X-ray technology is unable to provide a clear image of the optical path of corner-cutting cells or the overhang of electrodes. This limitation makes it infeasible to detect cell abnormalities caused by tilting and overhang, which can directly translate into hazards for consumers and reduce the average yield rate.
LEAD's CT scan, on the other hand, obtains a projection map of the cell and uses algorithms to reconstruct each object's internal structure. In addition, it can be applied throughout the entire manufacturing process, from material processing and cell production to module-packaging. This gives LEAD’s industrial CT technology various advantages over traditional inspection methods:
Wide application range
High detection accuracy
3D visualization
Better Insights in Real Time
Enhanced analytics are valuable, but LEAD's goal was to push the boundaries even further. Unlike traditional offline CT inspections that occur after the production process is complete, LEAD's inline CT system captures real-time data using CT equipment integrated into the production line. This innovative approach addresses significant drawbacks of offline solutions.
LEAD's cutting-edge inline industrial CT system offers a revolutionary boost in scanning efficiency. Unlike traditional offline solutions that can take several minutes or even tens of minutes for scanning and reconstruction, LEAD's inline CT accelerates this process to just a matter of seconds. This significant advancement enables manufacturers to perform thorough product inspections at an impressive speed of 12 PPM, with the possibility to configure it for speeds of up to 24 PPM, depending on the specific production line.
In the past, due to the speed limitations of traditional offline methods, manufacturers had no choice but to rely on sample inspections, leaving room for potential safety concerns. However, with LEAD's inline CT, businesses can now achieve real-time 100% inspection of their products during the production process.
LEAD's inline industrial CT is not limited to cell manufacturing alone. It plays a vital role in various critical inspection processes, including JR/stack internal structure inspection, collector welding inspections, and can-to-lid welding inspections. The system performs these operations automatically, handling tasks such as loading, positioning, imaging, unloading, and identifying and discharging any faulty products in each stage. This high degree of automation minimizes the need for manual intervention, enhancing efficiency and product quality.
Smarter Inspection Thanks to AI and the Cloud
To keep up with the production scope of manufacturers, LEAD paired its enhanced CT technology with artificial intelligence and a cloud-based platform for deep learning and visual inspection on a large scale. The LEAD-PAI platform adheres to the highest data security standards and leverages years of experience in lithium cell technology through customized deep-learning models with powerful image recognition. This allows for highly advanced classification procedures aimed at boosting quality standards and reducing waste.
Thanks to local AI modeling and a tailored cloud infrastructure, the algorithm can accurately detect manufacturing errors and assist in quality control, empowering manufacturers to improve production efficiency.
This new era of the energy industry calls for a more efficient and safer lithium cell manufacturing process. In the future, LEAD will continue to invest in research and development within industrial CT to help improve power battery safety with stronger quality inspection capabilities worldwide.
