No Way Around Robots

Greg Edwards, USA: The Director of Manufacturing Engineering, has worked for XALT Energy, a Midland, Mich.-based global developer and manufacturer of lithium ion technology solutions, since 2015.

Robots can really be found everywhere in the United States. In daily life and in industry, in particular. Automakers have long relied on help from robots for welding, painting and assembly. This is evidence that robots have proven strengths in repetitive activities. That’s what they do at XALT Energy. We have six robots at our site. We use them to assemble battery packs, among other tasks. A robot assembles battery cells into a single pack in several work steps. At an earlier stage, different robots sort by quality grade of the battery cells that we manufacture. They are programmed to identify non-conforming cells and automatically sort them out. In the process, we check to see whether the cells have the intended capacity and the specified internal resistance.

Robots are also taking over welding in battery pack assembly. It would take an employee about 30 to 45 minutes to weld an entire battery pack. A robot does the work in six to eight minutes and then places the pack on the conveyor for transport to the next stage. Our robots have accelerated our production process. Today we produce 30 battery packs per shift. Back in the prototype phase, our colleagues were only able to build two per day. Today, since we are making more batteries, we need more employees. We are currently trying to fill 100 new positions.

Incidentally, the robots that we use are typical stationary articulated-arm robots. We don't have cobots. Our employees naturally have to service the robots. We train our staff on how to deal with them. For example, they can program them and get them up and running again quickly in the event of malfunctions or breakdowns. In this respect, the robots enable our employees to build their skills.