Recently, Estun Automation was invited to participate in 2024 (7th) GaoGong Robotics Integrators Conference, focusing on the emerging trends in the field of intelligent manufacturing in the automotive industry, and Zhu Hong, BU Key Account Director of Automotive Industry of ESTUN Automation, delivered a keynote speech on the topic of “Intelligent Manufacturing in the New Energy Vehicle Industry Chain Application”.

Under the guidance of the “Dual Carbon” strategic goal, the new power system with new energy as the core and the new energy automobile industry present a synergistic and rapid development trend. In this context, how to realize high quality and efficient production has become a key issue for the industry to crack. As a leader in China's robotics industry, ESTUN has 87 models of 3-700kg industrial robots with complete solutions, and as many as 18 main models tailored for the automotive industry, providing the industry with a complete solution for automation of the whole industry chain.

Complete solutions for intelligent welding in the automotive industry

China's overall automotive and upstream components market is steadily picking up, with the new energy vehicle sector in particular being the highlight, and with the acceleration of technological innovation and green transformation, it is expected that its market position will jump significantly by 2024. Meanwhile, the auto parts market, as a key link in the industry chain, will see a stronger wave of growth and accelerated automation, injecting a strong impetus for the industry's continued prosperity.

Welding, a key link in automobile manufacturing, is a new demand for automotive welding processes in new markets as the automotive industry continues to grow. ESTUN grasps the difficulties of the industry and formulates a complete solution for intelligent welding in the automotive industry in a targeted manner.

Spot Welding Applications for Automotive Vehicles and Components

Figure 1: Automobile body-in-white spot welding

Figure 2: Automobile parts spot welding

Spot welding process is still in a dominant position in the automobile body assembly welding process. The difficulty of spot welding for the whole car is that the weld joints are more dense, and the parts are tiny workpieces, so it is difficult for the welding tongs to be accurately positioned. ESTUN customizes a complete solution for spot welding to meet the difficulty, and adopts a special robot for spot welding to realize bright and smooth weld joints, even and thin layer of solder, no cracks, no pinhole defects, and no flux residue, so that the welding quality and speed are much higher than that of manual welding, and the quality and efficiency of welding can be easily realized, and it has been batch-applied to the main line sub-assemblies of passenger vehicles, core components and commercial vehicle main lines. It has been applied to passenger cars, core components and commercial vehicle main lines in batch.

Automotive Intelligent Arc Welding Applications

Figure3: Automotive parts arc welding

To meet the welding needs of core automotive components such as battery trays, instrument panels, seats, front and rear subframes, non-load-bearing body chassis, crash beams, etc., ESTUN's subsidiary, CLOOS, has launched the QWAS ECO series of welding robots to create intelligent arc welding applications for the automotive industry. QWAS ECO series welding robots are equipped with advanced low-spatter and dynamic welding process solutions to weld automotive high-strength steel, galvanized sheet, 6-series aluminum alloy, etc. The self-developed laser recognition adaptive technology breaks the application problem of large floor line gap and greatly improves the welding qualification rate of the body-in-white.

Welding digitalization applications in the automotive industry

Figure 1: E-Noesis welding quality evaluation system

Figure 2: Welding workstation simulation

In the field of welding, the custom-developed welding quality evaluation system based on the E-Noesis platform can continuously optimize the user's welding process and improve welding efficiency and quality. In addition, by utilizing virtualization and simulation in the design and implementation of automation equipment, ESTUN has shortened the on-site commissioning time of the production line by 30% and reduced the comprehensive commissioning cost by 20%, effectively helping customers to reduce costs, shorten the construction period and improve efficiency.

In the wave of development towards intelligent manufacturing in the automotive industry, ESTUN, as a leading brand of automation in China, in the face of the market demand for high-quality and efficient production in the automotive industry, based on the layout of the whole industrial chain of products and a wealth of welding application processes, combined with digital twin, big data, virtual debugging, and other digital solutions, to create a complete one-stop digital and intelligent welding solutions for the automotive industry, to help automotive enterprises to achieve high efficiency, precision, Flexible intelligent manufacturing.