"Estun Automation has now penetrated into every aspect of production and manufacturing in the new energy industry," said Li Renzhi, general manager of Estun Automation's New Energy Industry Center.

The dual-carbon strategy drives the accelerated transformation of new energy. In the process of new energy transformation, every link needs corresponding intelligent manufacturing technology to ensure the production line in order to improve production efficiency, reduce costs, and improve product quality.

As a leading Chinese smart manufacturing brand with 30 years of experience, Estun Automation actively responds to the "dual carbon" goal and insists on layout in new energy sub-sectors such as photovoltaics, power batteries, energy storage, and new energy vehicles. Won the "New Energy Industry Smart Manufacturing TOP30" at the Gaogong 2024 (3rd) New Energy Smart Manufacturing Summit!

In order to meet the requirements of high speed, high precision, high stability, and high cost performance in the new energy industry, Estun Automation fully participates in the development of customized products, and relies on its core robot technology and advantages in the layout of the entire industrial chain to provide complete intelligent manufacturing solutions for the new energy industry.

Create a complete "Robot +" solution

Estun Automation was founded in 1993, has always adhered to the "ALL Made By ESTUN" strategy and built a complete industrial ecological chain of intelligent manufacturing based on autonomous motion control and robot core technologies. At the same time, it has also built a full range of competitive advantages in technology, products, quality, cost and service around the general trend of intelligent development of manufacturing industry.

In terms of core automation components and motion control systems, its main products include complete automation solutions for metal forming machine tools, motion control systems, robot-specific controllers, robot-specific servo systems, and intelligent control unit solutions that integrate machine vision and motion control, which can provide complete high-performance motion control solutions to meet various application scenarios.

Estun Automation Core Components and Motion Control Systems

At present, the above products are mainly used in the field of automation control of intelligent equipment such as metal forming CNC machine tools, robots, photovoltaic equipment, lithium battery equipment, 3C electronics, packaging machinery, printing machinery, textile machinery, woodworking machinery, medical machinery and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

In terms of industrial robots and intelligent manufacturing systems, Estun Automation already has 87 industrial robot products, with a product series covering 3KG~700KG, including six-axis general-purpose robots, four-axis palletizing robots, SCARA robots and industry-specific customized robots, which are widely used in automobiles, photovoltaics, lithium batteries, welding, metal processing, building materials and home furnishings and other industries.

Estun automated robots and intelligent manufacturing systems

According to statistics from Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute (GGII), Estun Automation has been ranked first in China's multi-joint industrial robot shipments for many years. In 2023, it ranked second in the Chinese industrial robot market shipments, and its market share further increased. Financial report data also shows that in 2023, Estun Automation achieved operating income of 4.652 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.87%.

On July 4, at the 2024 (3rd) New Energy Intelligent Manufacturing Summit co-organized by Gaogong Robotics and Gaogong Robotics Industry Institute (GGII), Li Renzhi mentioned in his speech: "Estun Automation not only has hardware related to motion control robots, but also combines edge computing technology to provide customers with hardware and supporting digital solutions."

Li Renzhi, General Manager of Estun Automation New Energy Industry Department

It is understood that Estun Automation has launched a more accurate and high-speed autonomous industrial robot dynamics model algorithm, combined with robots + AI vision, robots + sensors/actuators, robots + digital simulation platform, robots + industrial Internet platform, robots + mobile robots, etc., to provide customers with advanced and comprehensive related technologies in the industry. Li Renzhi firmly believes: "Robots + intelligent complete solutions can empower thousands of industries."

Based on the core technology of "robot +" complete solution, Estun Automation focuses on scenario-based applications and can provide more than 20 workstations and intelligent complete solutions for process applications such as bending, arc welding, spot welding, stamping, die-casting, grinding, gluing, assembly, and flexible sorting. Among them, sheet metal bending, stamping, photovoltaic typesetting, arc welding, etc. are all in a leading position in the industry.

"Robot+" leads the intelligent manufacturing of new energy

The new energy industry is experiencing a "Game of Ice and Fire". Companies are competing on price, delivery time, and local services... The path is tortuous, but the prospects are certain, and long-termism has become an industry consensus.

But no matter what changes happen in the industry, the market size of power batteries is still growing, and the market size of lithium-ion energy storage is still growing, even faster than power batteries. According to data from Gaogong Industry Research Institute of Lithium Battery (GGII), the compound growth rate of power batteries from 2023 to 2030 is expected to be less than 20%, and the compound growth rate of lithium-ion energy storage market from 2023 to 2030 is expected to be greater than 35%.

The sustained growth of the power battery and lithium battery energy storage market has also driven the rapid development of intelligent manufacturing to a certain extent. After more than a decade of continuous development, my country's new energy intelligent manufacturing has changed from being completely dependent on imported production line equipment to nearly 100% localization. Even in terms of production rhythm and whole line pass rate, domestic equipment has surpassed imports. As a leading Chinese robot company, Estun Automation has always shouldered the heavy responsibility of domestic substitution.

In response to the market demands for large-cell technology, high energy density, and diversified cell types and sizes in the lithium battery industry, Estun Automation has integrated the advantages of a series of products and technologies such as Trio motion controllers, Estun servo systems, industrial robots, machine vision, and digital products to create lean, efficient, and flexible production lines for the power battery/energy storage battery new energy industry. It provides intelligent and complete solutions for the entire process segments of the front-end coating, rolling, slitting, pole piece production and die-cutting, mid-stage cell winding and liquid injection, back-end packaging, chemical composition, testing and sorting, module assembly and PACK, and has been applied in the production lines of many leading domestic lithium battery companies.

Lithium Battery Intelligent Manufacturing Plant

According to Li Renzhi, "Lithium battery is currently the largest industry in the new energy field for Estun Automation, but the R&D investment is also very large, because the robots and motion control used in the lithium battery industry are not general products. For this reason, Estun Automation has customized and developed several motion control machine solutions; combined with the lithium battery process requirements, it has developed a variety of solutions such as film production and assembly modules; it has also customized and developed a variety of six-axis robots with a load of 35-700kg to meet the high-speed production applications of square, short knife, blade batteries, and 4680 large cylindrical batteries."

It is precisely because the process of lithium battery is relatively complicated that Estun Automation does not provide customers with single products, but combines the three core businesses of motion control, robotics, and digitalization to create a new intelligent solution for lithium battery from battery cells to modules/PACK. This solution is more flexible and intelligent, and the production line has added standardized concepts from equipment, process, cycle, project management, informationization and other aspects. The design of the entire production line is more reasonable, the manufacturing process is more standardized, the cycle is more scientific, the management is more advanced, the informationization is more intelligent, and the entire implementation process is smoother, effectively ensuring the smooth delivery and production of customers.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to launching intelligent complete solutions for the lithium battery industry, Estun Automation has also begun to deploy new energy segments such as flow batteries, hydrogen energy, photovoltaics, and launched corresponding intelligent complete solutions.

Based on intrinsic safety and long-term energy storage considerations, liquid flow batteries and hydrogen energy storage have also received more and more attention and expectations since 2023. In 2022-2023, the cumulative bids for liquid flow batteries based on all-vanadium exceeded 3GW. The delivery was delayed due to limited battery production capacity and electrolyte supply. With the release of industrial chain capacity, it is expected that the shipment of liquid flow batteries will exceed 1GW in 2024. In order to meet the production capacity demand of liquid flow batteries, Estun Automation has also launched corresponding digital intelligent production line solutions.

Flow Battery Smart Factory

Focusing on the needs of hydrogen energy storage, Estun Automation has also provided ER350-3300 large-load and high-inertia robots for hydrogen production applications. The robot has an optimized topology structure and a high-rigidity mechanical structure. The load weight reaches 350kg, the wrist inertia and torque are greatly improved, and a new generation of electrical cabinets are used, which has stronger anti-interference ability, better heat dissipation, and smaller size.

Hydrogen Energy Smart Factory

Compared with the two new areas of liquid flow batteries and hydrogen energy storage, Estun Automation began to get involved in the photovoltaic industry as early as ten years ago, providing all-round intelligent and complete solutions for the photovoltaic industry's silicon wafer manufacturing scenarios, battery cell manufacturing scenarios, and module manufacturing scenarios.

After more than ten years of continuous development, Estun Automation has achieved a high market share in both the front-end and back-end of the photovoltaic production line. It has provided more than 20,000 sets of robot solutions and dozens of motion control solutions for the photovoltaic industry's silicon wafer manufacturing scenarios, battery cell manufacturing scenarios, and module manufacturing scenarios, becoming a leader in intelligent manufacturing in the photovoltaic industry.

Digital empowerment to improve quality and efficiency

Lean management + digital tools can provide objective support for corporate managers' decisions on cost, quality, efficiency, etc., and improve corporate competitiveness.

To this end, Estun Automation takes "software + hardware + digital services" as its core competitiveness and continuously empowers operational efficiency and product quality improvement. Li Renzhi also said: "Digitalization has become our flagship product. Now that the new energy industry is so involuted, we also hope that the latest digital technology can help us reduce costs and increase efficiency for our customers."

According to Gaogong Robot, Estun Automation focuses on the digital application needs of smart factories and has successively developed "motion control industrial software platform", "simulation and offline programming software", "graphical programming software", and "discrete manufacturing-product digital management software", covering the three major links of production line design and verification, integrated delivery, production and equipment operation and maintenance, providing a complete digital solution for the entire life cycle.

In addition, it has also built the E-Noesis industrial digital platform, including multiple subsystems such as equipment management and remote operation and maintenance system, factory operation lean management E-PCS system, digital twin system, and project management transparency system, focusing on the field of industrial production and deeply understanding the value of data. Through the operation and maintenance wizard, the production and operation data of the equipment is collected in real time. After data cleaning and edge computing, the comprehensive integration, analysis and utilization of the production process data are realized, breaking the data island of offline equipment.

Estun E-Noesis Industrial Digital Platform

At present, the digital services provided by Estun Automation have covered production management, process flow control, process quality inspection and optimization, equipment fault warning, equipment remote operation and maintenance, data statistical analysis and other aspects. They can help customers quickly build their own lightweight lean management platform and effectively ensure the efficient and stable operation of the production line. It has now been recognized by well-known customers in many industries such as new energy, lithium batteries, welding, and photovoltaics.

Finally, Li Renzhi also mentioned that the company is fully promoting its global business layout, and has 75 service outlets around the world, covering major manufacturing and economically developed regions such as Europe, America, and Asia. It has safety certifications that meet international standards such as CE, UL, and high-standard functional safety, and has created an international standard system in various links such as design, manufacturing, and operation. Based on Estun Automation's rich experience in overseas market development and a complete localization team, it helps Chinese companies to layout the international market and shape a global brand with high-quality products, complete intelligent solutions and services.