CIE Components in Electronics
BMZ GmbH, a leading European rechargeable battery manufacturer, is to begin construction of Europe’s first highly automated rechargeable battery production plant at the company’s headquarters in Karlstein near Aschaffenburg. Once completed the plant will be able to almost fully automatically assemble, weld and test up to 200,000 rechargeable batteries. The first stage of the new production facility is expected to be completed by the beginning of 2014. Investment costs are estimated to be around 5 million Euros.
Sven Bauer, the company’s founder and sole proprietor sees the significant extension of production capacity as an important milestone to becoming a leading specialist for intelligent rechargeable battery solutions. “With our highly efficient, highly automated rechargeable battery pack production facility we want to prove that BMZ in Germany is internationally competitive in all respects from a manufacturing point of view”, explains Bauer.
The new facility looks to combine quality and safety with speed and flexibility, explained Bauer. Individual production steps such as feeding the cells, the placement of the cell holders and also the welding of cell connectors by resistance welding are divided into several interchangeable production cells in order to make future adjustments easier and quicker. Inverter welding machines guarantee continuously high welding quality with precise monitoring of the process. Subsequent tests of the batteries are virtually completely automated apart from a few exceptions which depend on the type and configuration of the respective battery packs.
A high degree of safety and flexibility is additionally guaranteed by the integrated ID of the customer-specific work piece holders. The recording of all pack-related data by individual production stations and its unique assignment to the respective product look to guarantee the traceability of every single battery produced.
The production facility has been designed to cater for a variety of battery sizes in the 200 g to 3 kg weight range. This enables both small units for domestic appliances and big batteries for e-bikes to be produced.
Bauer regards this as an important competitive advantage. “The modular approach not only guarantees flexibility and better production planning but will further raise the quality of our products – all important pre-conditions to help consistently consolidate BMZ’s position as the leading European system supplier for intelligent lithium rechargeable battery solutions.”
