SEAL APPLICATION BASE PLATE AUDI E-TRON

Following the successful automation of the sealing process for Land Rover battery boxes, IMA was commissioned to automate the sealing of the Audi e-tron’s floor panel as well.

The design of the existing assembly cell had already taken potential expansion into account. Thanks to this foresight, we did not have to build an entirely new cell for this project.

However, the changes were not to disrupt the ongoing production and delivery of the battery boxes. By first increasing production, a stockpile could be built up. The expansion and renovation at IMA took only 6 weeks in total. After that, production could resume immediately.

IMA devised a flexible solution to handle two products in a single assembly cell.

Project Manager Gregory: “To seal the base plate, we use the same foam unit as for the battery box. Because the existing robot is too small for the bottom plates (dimensions 2.20 x 1.40 meters), and to avoid disrupting battery box production, we added a new robot. This robot picks up the plate and then performs the same operations on it as it does on the battery box. Thanks to a camera, the foam layer can be applied very precisely into the groove. Plasma pretreatment ensures a strong bond.”

A major advantage of this method is that the two robots continue to operate simultaneously. While the small robot is used for battery box production, the camera on the new large robot scans the panels. This means the foam unit is in constant use.

To enable the use of both robots simultaneously, the cycle times of the battery box cell were optimized. As a result, the cell can process 50,000 base plates and 14,000 battery boxes per year simultaneously.