Laser Welding Head Vision System Enables Revolution In EV Battery & Motor Manufacturing

Coherent recently announced HIGHvision, a machine vision system for laser welding heads, that greatly improves the efficiency of manufacturing electric vehicle (EV) batteries and motors.

The transition to EVs worldwide is expected to accelerate, enabled in part by process innovations that lower their manufacturing costs, and by advancing toward Industry 4.0 and digital and smart manufacturing techniques that will increasingly contain machine learning and artificial intelligence, making them more competitive with internal combustion engines. As a next step, Coherent has developed HIGHvision, a turnkey system consisting of advanced machine vision hardware and software that enables laser welding heads to align to software-defined features on the workpiece in milliseconds and with ultrahigh accuracy. HIGHvision greatly accelerates welding throughput, which lowers the total cost of ownership, all while maintaining very high quality and reliability.

“What makes our laser welding solution with HIGHvision among the fastest and most accurate on the market is that we designed laser welding heads specifically around an embedded vision system architecture,” said Dr. Karlheinz Gulden, Senior Vice President, Laser Components and Subsystems Business Unit. “Laser welding heads with HIGHvision can be seamlessly integrated with Coherent HighLight FL-ARM lasers, providing customers with an all-in-one solution and extensive capabilities to optimize welding process parameters.”

HIGHvision includes an extensive library of processing applications, including welding battery busbar, tab, and can-cap assemblies, as well as electric motor stator hairpins. HIGHvision is available as an option for the HIGHmotion 2D and RLSK remote laser welding heads. The library of processing applications will continue to be developed, including with future AI-assisted algorithms.

For more information: www.coherent.com