At BTF 2023, Cognex machine vision empowers power battery manufacturing

On the one hand, with the continuous emergence of new energy products and technologies and the continuous promotion of incentive policies, new energy vehicles have entered an explosive period and have now become the direction and goal of the future development of the automobile industry. The high prosperity of the new energy automobile industry has driven lithium batteries into an era of high growth, and the global installed capacity of power lithium batteries has grown rapidly. As a major ofproducer power lithium batteries, China is riding the east wind to rise rapidly when the growth momentum of lithium batteries is changing. On the other hand, countries around the world have proposed "zero carbon" goals, which has led to the vigorous development of energy storage batteries. According to comprehensive forecasts, the lithium battery industry will continue to grow in the next five years.

On March 7, the Shanghai International New Energy Lithium Battery Technology Fair (BTF) officially opened at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. Cognex showed up at the exhibition with its new lithium battery manufacturing technology. At the booth, OFweek interviewed Cognex New Energy Industry Manager Wan Shufeng to gain an in-depth understanding of how Cognex's smart solutions for lithium battery manufacturing assembly line inspection can help power battery manufacturers overcome difficulties and achieve breakthroughs.

Create targeted products and serve the market well with good strength

In 2022, China's cumulative power battery production will reach 549.9GWh, a cumulative year-on-year increase of 148.5%, and energy storage battery shipments will exceed 130GWh. While the industrial scale continues to expand, the new energy industry is also undergoing industrial structural adjustments.

Cognex is firmly optimistic about the development of China's new energy market, starting from consumer batteries and continuing to expand into power batteries. With the rapid growth of the domestic new energy industry, Cognex has also established a dedicated new energy industry team in China to serve a large number of well-known domestic brand customers and gain sufficient industry experience and user recognition.

At the booth, Cognex New Energy Industry Manager Wan Shufeng introduced to us one by one the blockbuster products brought this time:

Smartline intelligent edge finding tool is the first intelligent solution launched by Cognex equipped with Cognex Edge Learning technology. It is specially designed to handle challenging edge detection. It combines the advantages of traditional visual edge-finding tools with the powerful segmentation capabilities of deep learning, and uses algorithms with high sub-pixel level precision to achieve fast and dynamic edge-finding, which makes up for the risk of misjudgment in manual detection and can solve the problem of lithium battery During the manufacturing process, there are challenging problems such as being unable to find edges due to confusing edges in the image. According to Wan Shufeng, after deploying this solution, the production line can increase inspection efficiency by 30%, and is suitable for various occasions such as lamination alignment inspection, module end cover glue alignment inspection, and top cover size measurement.

When using the EL Classify tool equipped with the Cognex smart camera In-Sight 2800 vision system to detect pole pollution on batteries, only a small number of training samples are needed to quickly implement classification deployment and determine whether the poles are dirty. . No GPU is required, training models and additional on-site learning can be generated through a commonly used PC, and maintenance and additional learning are also very convenient.

For battery weld detection, Cognex DS800 series products can be used to measure the welds at the connection positions of the positive and negative electrodes, the connection positions between the electrodes and the cover, and the intersection positions of the battery can and the cover corners, to locate and detect the welding area. Welding quality can effectively improve battery assembly efficiency.

The In-Sight 3D-L4000 series is aimed at top cover plane inspection. With the combination of three-dimensional laser displacement technology and smart cameras, visual tools can be placed directly on the true three-dimensional part image to ensure the measurement accuracy of the flatness of the lithium battery top cover sheet and adapt to The production process has strict requirements on the dimensional accuracy of the battery's external top cover and aluminum shell to facilitate the subsequent welding and liquid injection processes.

With industrial upgrading, lithium battery companies are also establishing a series of complete inspection systems and traceability systems from raw materials, semi-finished products, to finished products leaving the factory. The Cognex DataMan 475V barcode grade verifier follows this trend and can correctly grade 1D and 2D barcodes according to the ISO 15415 standard. It can grade up to 20 barcodes per second and can complete 100% verification directly on the production line at high speed. and quality reporting to identify and correct printing and process control issues the first time. Detailed reports can be saved on all barcodes verified, enabling traceability, statistical process control and compliance. At present, with the arrival of domestic power battery companies going overseas, compliance with ESG, ISO and other specifications has become a trend. This product has entered leading companies in the global lithium battery industry and has been unanimously recognized by upstream and downstream companies in the supply chain.

At the exhibition, Cognex also showed users the latest generation of fixed code readers, the DataMan 280 series, which relies on the advantages of stable code reading, flexible connection and communication to improve throughput and productivity in various application scenarios. In actual use, it can reach a reading rate of 99.98%+.

In addition to vision cameras, Cognex also brings us VisionPro Deep Learning software. In the lithium battery production process, the thickness of the blue film is small, only between 0.015mm-0.20mm, and defects such as scratches, breakage, and wrinkles are prone to occur during the production process. These defects not only affect the appearance of the product, but may even cause damage to the function of the product. damage. The Cognex VisionPro Deep Learning deep learning algorithm can well identify and help solve appearance defects such as tiny bubble defects, scratches, wrinkles, and uneven film edges. The overall solution combining 2D+3D+AI can help users effectively solve the detection needs after blue film coating.

With the support of strength and competitiveness, Cognex's customers currently cover the lithium battery industry. From Tesla and BYD to Volkswagen, BMW, and Ford, from LG, SDI, SK on to CATL, SVOLT, EVE, etc., Cognex products are present. And with the help of this exhibition, it officially announced new future plans to domestic users: in response to the development trends and pain points of the lithium battery industry, more excellent overall solutions will be launched, relying on its technical advantages in the field of machine vision to help the lithium battery industry. Customers drive industry development, transformation and upgrading.

Keep up with the pace of development and adapt to the rhythm of lithium battery production

The scale of the lithium battery industry has put forward higher requirements for production lines, and the requirements for the speed and rhythm of production lines are getting higher and higher. Cognex has always paid attention to the industry's demands for "high speed" and has provided solutions such as positioning + measurement + OCR. On the basis of this, in order to better integrate the solution with the production line, Cognex deconstructed the machine vision application and evolved some of the original deep learning tools into edge learning, namely Edge Learning Technology, including Smartline tools, ViDi EL Read , ViDi EL Classify and other lightweight AI tools allow many detection functions that previously relied on GPU computing power to now only require traditional CPUs to achieve the same effect. Edge Learning technology makes high-speed detection possible and can help Customers build a competitive advantage with next-generation machine vision inspection.

Wan Shufeng said that Cognex is also constantly optimizing the parallel processing capabilities of the software, supporting cross-platform capabilities, better supporting different programming languages, and completing iterations from the product itself to adapt to more customer needs. The machine vision software "VisionPro" launched by Cognex combines ease of use, efficiency and high performance. After integrating deep learning technology, Cognex VisionPro Deep Learning software has become the most complete One Vision platform in the industry. After the release of the new 3.0 version, it can not only improve detection capabilities, but also enhance the reproducibility between wire bodies, safeguarding the large-scale mass production of the lithium battery industry.

Stay advanced and create more surprises

After more than 40 years of technological accumulation, Cognex has always been "prepared for danger in times of peace" based on its current achievements, maintaining a progressive trend, constantly changing and innovating, and creating more new products that meet the development needs of the lithium battery industry.

As the dual-carbon target has reached a global consensus, in order to cope with the complex testing environment of the rewinding and unwinding types in the lithium battery industry, achieve rapid deployment, effective testing, pursue the ultimate missed kill rate, and reduce the overkill rate, Cognex is developing the next generation The development of customized products and processing speed will be qualitatively improved, bringing a better production experience to customers in the lithium battery industry.