BST presents inline quality assurance systems: Battery production precisely to the point and digitally documented

In Hall 10 Booth B64, BST will present not only the high-end surface inspection system iPQ- Surface^ENERGY but also its intelligent, networked web guiding system in combination with high-precision measuring tasks using camera technology. As a highlight, the quality assurance specialist will be showing its visitors SMARTData – the innovative solution for the open-interface connection of a wide variety of systems. SMARTData enables the collection, processing, and cross-process distribution of data to increase quality and efficiency. In this way, BST provides answers to the most crucial questions in the battery industry. "Electromobility and stationary energy storage are key technologies for tomorrow’s mobility and energy supply. Supply shortages in Asia and the current energy crisis have increased the existing enormous pressure on the industry to rapidly advance the domestic development of lithium-ion batteries. We show how to achieve high quality and low reject rates in mass production. In other words, our intelligently networked solutions across process steps help to increase overall plant effectiveness and reduce total cost of ownership. This is the only way European manufacturers can become more competitive with Asia," says Klaus Hamacher, Director New Business Development at BST.

Surface inspection and networked web guiding are BST’s core competencies. The company, based in Bielefeld is now using its decades of market experience from battery production in China to strengthen European battery manufacturers in particular in a highly dynamic global market. "We offer efficiency-increasing and quality-assuring solutions in the closed-loop process, automated set-up and web-position accurate documentation and automation solutions that are relevant in the production process of lithium-ion batteries for the areas of coating, slitting, calendering, separating, lamination, stacking and winding – in short, all web-processing process steps of cell production. There is a lot of potential here for Europe to stand out from Asia through brilliant quality and high production efficiency – and that’s where our products are strong," Hamacher summarizes.

For a change, the BST solutions are the main actors at the booth, as they usually do their precise work behind the scenes: installed in the production machines of various other manufacturers. Rarely else can the cameras, sensors and controllers be experienced live. In Stuttgart, visitors can now take a direct look at the most important BST solutions, for example the globally unique flat web guiding system BST FRAMEGuide.

Inline quality assurance systems create added value

The production of lithium-ion batteries is a highly dynamic market. Demand is quickly rising all over the world. The automotive industry has relied for too long on a discontinued model in the form of combustion engines and has therefore overslept its own development of battery cells compared with the Asians. Now it is up to Europe to manage the transformation of the supplier industry in the direction of battery production by having European battery manufacturers implement the entire supply chain for the production of a battery in Europe in order to secure European jobs. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, the EU is introducing the battery passport, which will see every industrial battery with a capacity of more than 2 kWh receive its own digital file, known as a battery passport, from January 1, 2026. "At Battery Show Europe 2022, BST will showcase comprehensive solutions that reduce costs in web-processing operations while increasing quality and documenting all production steps in the form of a digital battery twin," explains Klaus Hamacher. And further: "With our inline quality assurance systems, we help to close local competence gaps and to fully exploit the lucrative added value of the first production steps."