BREYER says it has equipped the calendering expertise for V4Smart, the battery three way partnership shaped by Porsche and VARTA to supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells in Germany for high-performance purposes together with sports activities automobiles and hybrid fashions.
Calendering is likely one of the key steps in electrode manufacturing: after the slurry is coated and dried, the electrode passes via precision rollers that compress it to a managed thickness and density. That step has a giant impact on porosity, adhesion and consistency from cell to cell. In different phrases, if you’d like high-performance cells, the calender isn’t just one other field on the road—it is likely one of the locations the place efficiency will get locked in.
In line with BREYER, its calendering strains are designed to ship the dimensional accuracy wanted for constant cell efficiency whereas holding scrap low, and have been built-in into V4Smart’s extremely automated manufacturing atmosphere at websites in Ellwangen and Nördlingen. The corporate says the manufacturing setup was established in a short while and is basically digitized and automatic.
A serious a part of the mission is a plant-wide track-and-trace system. BREYER says each particular person battery cell is digitally tracked via all course of steps through a higher-level management system, with manufacturing information repeatedly recorded, expanded and handed to the following manufacturing step. That sort of traceability issues in performance-oriented cell manufacturing, the place tight batch management is crucial and the top software doesn’t go away a lot room for variation.
The broader argument within the announcement is industrial fairly than simply equipment-specific: BREYER is positioning V4Smart as proof that high-performance battery factories could be constructed rapidly in Europe, not simply in Asia. VARTA Microbattery served as normal contractor for V4Smart and Porsche and was chargeable for the planning, building, and commissioning of the electrode and cell manufacturing services.
Supply: BREYER
