Development and Validation of a Progressive Electrode Notching Machine

Industrial automation solutions are generally suitable for the standardized production in rapid succession of identical products. In recent years, with the spread of electronic systems for the complex control of electric motors (the so-called motion controllers), the needs of an increasingly diversified and varied market are guiding the designers towards an optimization of the production process that takes into account the need to change format or type of product based on customer requests. This necessity often leads to the modification of some automatic machines belonging to a production line in order to avoid or skip some steps that could no longer be necessary in view to the flexibility of modern control systems. This technological evolution has also affected the scope of the so-called energy storage market, i.e. that industry sector that bases its business on the production of batteries and capacitors. This thesis project, carried out in over one year of collaboration with the company Manz Italy S.r.l., focuses on the development and validation of an automatic machine for the continuous production of an electrode film, to be used in lithium-ion batteries, and notched in a progressive manner. In particular, this project is related to large dimensions lithium-ion batteries aimed to the electric vehicle growing market.