Mitsubishi Electric and industrial machine vision specialist Koenig & Bauer, are collaborating to offer standardised machine vision for electrode foil surface production, a key component in battery cell assembly.

By integrating Mitsubishi Electric’s contact image sensors (CIS) and Koenig & Bauer’s illumination units and embedded frame grabbers, the partners will create modules to achieve perfect imaging conditions for electrode foil surfaces. These are challenging to inspect with conventional, available setups.

The modules will enable battery cell manufacturers to improve their production efficiency, reduce their failure rate, and ensure the safety and reliability of their products and are going to reduce integration efforts. The modules will also be compatible with electrode foils for various battery cell types, such as pouch, cylindrical, or prismatic, and can support different production processes.

Mitsubishi Electric and Koenig & Bauer’s partnership is a response to the anticipated rise in demand for lithium-ion batteries due to the increasing popularity of electric vehicles as well as growing requirements in the consumer electronics industry and power grid.

Machine vision is a key technology that can help battery manufacturers by enhance quality control and automation capabilities while reducing waste rates.

“We are excited to partner with Koenig & Bauer and bring our innovative machine vision solutions to the battery cell production industry in standardised modules, as this will decrease integration efforts ” said Martin Messy, Director CIS  at Mitsubishi Electric. “We believe that our CIS, combined with Koenig & Bauer’s illumination units, will offer a unique value proposition to our customers and help them overcome the challenges of inspecting electrode foil.”

“In partnership with Mitsubishi Electric, we are applying our extensive experience in the development and construction of printing machines as well as inline and offline machine vision systems for quality control to this application,” said Julian Schubert, Vice President of Data, Vision and Authentication Solutions at Koenig & Bauer. “We are confident that our high power illumination units, our own embedded frame grabbers,  integrated with Mitsubishi Electric’s CIS, will provide optimal imaging conditions for battery cell inspection and enable our customers to produce safer and more reliable battery products.”