QA solutions for Battery Manufacturing

Quality Battery Manufacturing:
An Insider’s View.

Is battery manufacturing ready for disruption?

The battery manufacturing industry is booming, it is growing exponentially to support our dreams of electrification and decarbonization. However, incremental technological improvements cannot match exponential growth – we need a technological leap.

As an industry we need new standards for sustainable operations, where data, quality assurance, and transparency ensure optimal use of valuable raw materials throughout the battery manufacturing process. On a larger scale, these standards will ensure end product safety, safeguarding profit margins, and protecting our environment.

Titan's understanding and application of ultrasound capabilities brings indispensable solutions for breakthrough quality management at various stages of the lithium-ion cell manufacturing process. We inspect every battery thoroughly and rapidly, instantly pointing out defects at the molecular level, analyzing the big picture, and delivering actionable insights to the production line.

Building the Gigafactory
of the Future

Titan is built from the ground up on the belief in an electric world powered by clean energy. Along with renewable sources of energy this world will need safe, high-performing, cost-effective batteries that will allow us to use energy where and when we need it.

The rapidly growing demand for batteries, the shortage of raw materials, and the market-wide re-calls due to manufacturing issues have placed significant pressures on battery manufacturers, challenging the status quo and making the industry ripe for disruption. Dozens of new battery manufacturing plants have been announced globally, some by recently incorporated cell manufacturing entities, all looking for cutting-edge engineering that can help improve processes, increase outputs, and minimize waste.

Together with gigafactories and cell equipment manufacturers worldwide Titan is working to build the factory of the future, today. We are now observing batteries at an increased resolution, going to the molecular level, and delivering actionable insights throughout the manufacturing process.

Our aim is to reach 100% cell testing and classification, increasing battery production quality and reducing waste by mitigating manufacturing variability. As a result, we deliver safer, longer-lasting, better-performing batteries — moving increasingly closer to the aspirational goal of perfectly homogeneous cells.

Predictive Battery Manufacturing Analytics

Using ultrasound technology Titan inspects cell morphology, identifies cell anomalies and defects, and uses that information to grade cells based on capacity, and predicted performance over its lifetime.

High resolution, in-line cell inspection delivers major value to battery production by enabling grading of cells according to their capacity and predicted lifetime performance. Manufacturing metrics allow us to identify and track product variability in real time as cells are produced and move through our in-line scanning process.

As a result, gigafactories can use insights for timely process interventions to:

Optimize Yield
Increase Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Modify production in real-time based on early defect detection and inactive zones identification
Identify and intercept scrap early to maximize utilization of raw materials and manufacturing equipment
Minimize in-field warranty issues and reputational damage

Our battery quality assurance solution is a combination of hardware, software and machine learning algorithms designed to inspect 100% of battery cells produced, in-line, through automated equipment.

The testing equipment is supported by a user-friendly dashboard designed to help quality professionals monitor and report cell manufacturing variability, eventually building predictive models.

Why Ultrasound?

To complete the battery manufacturing process, batteries undergo end-of-line testing to evaluate their capacity, internal resistance, and self-discharge. If a battery does not satisfy performance requirements, it may be considered for further inspection. Computer topography (CT) scanning is the most prominent technology for visual cell inspection, however this technology is not available at most battery manufacturing plants, so in-depth testing is outsourced to third parties. CT testing takes hours to complete and costs hundreds of dollars per cell, limiting battery manufacturers to take a random sample of cells to determine their cause of failure.

Titan’s ultrasound-based interrogation technology brings speed, resolution, and favorable economics, enabling comprehensive testing of every cell within the existing manufacturing process. Most significantly, ultrasound outperforms CT scanning by creating feature-rich datasets, which uncover otherwise imperceivable cell anomalies.

Learn more about the science of ultrasound

Example: CT and ultrasound scan of the same pouch cell

Both scans detected tear inside one of the cell layers, bottom right section
Ultrasound found material property variations (purple shadowing), which were almost imperceivable in CT scan
Ultrasound test took minutes while CT scan took hours

Your Cell Manufacturing Equipment, Our Battery Intelligence

Using ultrasound technology Titan inspects cell morphology, identifies cell anomalies, and determines capacity and impact on the cell safety and lifetime performance.

We partner with top-tier cell equipment manufacturers to deliver a full quality solution. Each client is unique, and so is our battery quality assurance solution. We customize the configuration of our system and algorithms to meet each battery type and to seamlessly integrate within your existing workflow.

To achieve the best results, we partner with industry experts, cell manufacturing equipment OEMs and integrators worldwide. By combining their expertise in productization and technology integration for industrial environments with our ultrasound-based interrogation technology we can deliver full quality solutions to our cell manufacturing customers.

If you are a cell manufacturer or cell equipment OEM and would like to learn more about our solutions, please get in touch. We are actively expanding our list of global partners and working on our first pilot deployment.