Factory Keeps EV Battery Pack and Module Production Moving

Electric vehicle (EV) battery performance and safety depend on good thermal management. Thermal interface materials (TIMs) effectively dissipate heat from all parts of the EV battery pack, from the cells to cooling plates.

Yet, TIMs often cause production headaches on EV battery assembly lines. Such was the case for a large, multinational automotive manufacturer.

The automaker needed to quickly dispense several kilograms of two-component thermal interface material (TIM) into EV battery packs. However, the highly abrasive gap filler often packed out and clogged fluid paths in their equipment.

Frequent fluid path clogging under high pressure not only affected accuracy and quality, it also caused frequent equipment shutdown for service.

The manufacturer subsequently asked Graco’s Asia Pacific team to help a factory in India deal with TIMs dispensing challenges. They needed a reliable solution that fit these production requirements: 

• Allow a wide range of bead sizes — from 0.1 cc to 50 cc. 
• Maintain fast production speeds, with flow rates in excess of 10 cc/s.
• A dependable, energy-saving system.

Graco application specialists worked with the factory’s EV battery assembly line engineers to identify production pain points and testing parameters. At the end of the process, dispensing systems strengthened with ELITE CONSTRUCTION™ were proven to meet their needs.

The factory’s TIMs dispense solution for EV battery pack and module assembly includes these Graco systems – all with abrasion-resistant Elite™ construction.

_{* Results may vary. Variables affecting component life include but are not limited to, material chemistry/fillers, flow rate, cycle rate, maintenance diligence, and system pressure.}

With Elite™ construction reinforcing the EV battery pack and module production, the automotive factory in India soon experienced these assembly line improvements:

• Equipment keeps dispensing a wide range of bead sizes without getting clogged up.
• Flow rates in excess of 10 cc/s keep production moving with little interruption to service equipment.
• The electric system eliminates the need of a regulator, thus reducing the risk of clogging and saving the time of cleaning up the regulator every week.