Cells in at one end, tested packs off the other — one takt across both segments +86 15327155363 sales@batterylinepro.com

Conveying and positioning / BLP-CV — the segment between the stations

The Battery Assembly Conveyor Is Not a Machine — It Turns
32 Stations Into One Line

It carries ≥200 kg at up to 20 m/min, but neither figure is what the next machine depends on. What it depends on is where the part stops — and whether it is located there.

Send your module and station list Go straight to stop-and-lift

⚠️ Conveying speed is not takt. The slowest station sets takt — this figure only decides what is lost between stations. Section 07.

What the next station inherits

  • Arrest — the carrier stops travelling
  • Lift and locate — the part is set against a datum
  • The gap between them — takt variance and station alarms
  • ≥200 kgCarrier load
  • ≤20 m/minConveying speed
  • ModularStop and lift positioning

Seventeen stations, then fifteen more. This is the thing between them.

Every other page on this site describes a station. This one describes the distance between two stations, which is where a line stops being a collection of machines.

A station is a place where something happens

Stacking, welding, gluing, testing — each one is specified by what it does to the part and how accurately it does it. They are written up one by one on the module segment and pack segment pages.

The conveyor is where nothing happens to the part

It is the only element on the line whose job is to change nothing except position — and the only one every station depends on to have done that correctly.

Which is why it is specified last and blamed first

When a welding station drifts, the weld gets inspected. When it drifts because the part arrived a millimetre out of place, the inspection finds nothing wrong with the welder.

Seventeen stations in the module segment and fifteen in the pack segment — thirty-two in total — are not a line until something moves the part through them the same way every time. That is what is specified on this page, and on our lines it is specified as BLP-CV.

Module assembly line seen along its length with the conveying section running through it
Rendering — the line, seen along the conveying section
The open span of conveyor between two adjacent work stations
Rendering — the span between two stations
Carrier bringing a module up to a station on the conveying line
Rendering — a carrier arriving at a station

If you found this page first, here is what we build and where we stop

Conveyor searches bring in people specifying a whole cell plant. Two minutes here can save you a fortnight of quotations from entirely the wrong kind of supplier.

What we build

Module and pack assembly lines for energy-storage and EV pack plants — cell sorting, module stacking and pressing, busbar laser welding, liquid-cooled plate gluing, and module and pack end-of-line testing. The conveyor on this page is a segment of those lines. Start at the overview →

Where the line starts

With cells already made and delivered to your door. Everything from that point to a tested pack leaving the line is what we engineer, install and hand over.

Where we stop, and why it saves you time to know now

Mixing, coating, calendering, winding, electrode stacking, electrolyte filling, formation and grading, and container assembly belong to a different plant and a different supplier. If a conveyor for any of those is what you are sourcing, this is the wrong page — and finding that out in your first minute here is worth more to you than anything else on it.
Cells arrive Module segment Pack segment Tested pack leaves
Prismatic cells delivered on trays at the start of the line
Rendering — where the line starts
Finished module leaving the last station of the segment
Rendering — where our scope ends

A stop arrests the part. It does not decide where the part is. Everything downstream is built on the difference between those two sentences.

Arrest

The carrier stops travelling.

Locate

The part is set against a datum.

The gap between them

Is where takt variance and station alarms come from.

Three figures on the datasheet, and the question each one answers

⚠️ Two of them are ceilings, not operating points. Read them as limits and the third one becomes the interesting number.

≥200 kgCarrier load

What it answers

Can the heaviest thing you will ever put on a carrier ride on it — module, fixture and all?

What it does not answer

Whether a finished pack rides on it. It does not. Section 06 →
≤20 m/minConveying speed

What it answers

How much of each cycle is spent travelling between stations rather than working inside one?

What it does not answer

Your takt. The slowest station sets that. Section 07 →
ModularStop and lift positioning

What it answers

Does the next machine have to find the part again, or is it already where that machine expects it?

What it does not answer

Nothing on this page. This is the row the rest of it is about. Section 08 →
PanelledBoth sides

What it answers

Whether people can work beside this segment all shift — argued on the pack assembly line page.

What it does not answer

What it costs you to reach the line body afterwards. Section 12 →
Every figure above is a limit, not a setting. A conveyor running at its rated load and its rated speed at the same time is a conveyor at the edge of its specification, not one in normal service.
The panels have two halves to their story. Why they are there is argued once, on the pack assembly line page, where people stand beside this segment all shift. What is on this page is the other half — what they cost you at the third maintenance visit.
We do not print a stop-position tolerance here. It is a property of the tooling that takes the part, and that tooling is cut against your module — so the honest version of that number arrives with your drawings rather than before them.
Carrier deck of the conveying section with a module in its fixture
Rendering — what the load rating carries
Frame and drive section of the conveying line seen from the aisle
Rendering — the line body itself

Why the carrier is rated at ≥200 kg when the module weighs ≤100 kg

The headroom is not caution. It is the fixture, it is the compatibility envelope, and it is the fact that a rating has to hold for the largest module you will ever run rather than the blueprint one.

The blueprint module is ≤100 kg

A 1P13S module built from the blueprint cell is what the line was designed around, and it is roughly half the rating. The full blueprint — cell, module and pack — is published on the energy-storage pack line page.

The fixture rides with it

What travels is not a module. It is a module held square in a carrier fixture, and the fixture is part of what the rating has to carry. A rating quoted for the part alone is quoted for something that never travels by itself.

The compatibility envelope is wider than the blueprint

The line accepts modules well outside the blueprint dimensions. A rating sized exactly to the blueprint is a rating that has already decided you will never change format.

The ≤400 kg figure is the pack, and the pack is not what travels here

BLP-CV carries modules and their fixtures. It does not carry finished packs. If you have seen 400 kg elsewhere on this site and 200 kg here and wondered which is wrong: neither — they are two different objects at two different points in the line. Where BLP-CV is listed against the pack segment as well as the module segment, that is because it carries the module into the pack segment, not because it moves an assembled pack.

Read a load rating as a promise about the heaviest thing that will ever sit on it, not as a description of what usually does. That is the only reading under which the number is still true on the day your format changes.

Assembled module seated in its carrier fixture on the conveying line
Rendering — module and fixture, together
Blueprint prismatic module of the kind the line was designed around
Rendering — the blueprint module

≤20 m/min is a loss figure, not a rate figure

Takt is set by the slowest station. Conveying speed only decides how much of each cycle is spent travelling — which is exactly why a faster conveyor does not buy you PPM.

  1. Step 01

    What sets takt

    The slowest station in the segment. Every other station, and the conveyor, wait on it. Takt is published per tier on the tier selection page.
  2. Step 02

    What the conveyor decides

    The time between one station releasing the part and the next one having it located. That interval is the only part of the cycle this figure touches.
  3. Step 03

    Why the ceiling sits where it does

    Speed and stopping repeatability pull against each other. A carrier arriving faster brings more energy into the stop, and that energy has to go somewhere before the part can be located.
  4. Step 04

    What that means in a quotation

    If a higher conveying speed is offered to you as a throughput advantage, ask which station it made faster. The answer is usually none of them.

This is the most common way a conveying specification gets oversold, and it is easy to see why: speed is the cheapest figure to raise and the one that changes the least. It is also the figure most likely to be printed in bold at the top of a datasheet, which is roughly the inverse of how much it decides.

Long run of conveying line between two groups of stations
Rendering — the travelling part of a cycle
Waiting position immediately in front of a work station
Rendering — waiting on the slowest station

Stopping and lifting decide whether the next machine has to find the part again

This is the part of a conveying specification that the rest of the line is built on top of, so it gets the long answer rather than a table row.

  1. Why this one

    Of everything a conveyor does, this is the only part the next machine inherits.

    A station can absorb a slow line by waiting. No station can absorb a part that is not where it was told the part would be. Every accuracy figure quoted anywhere else on this line — vision addressing, weld seam position, glue path — is quoted with respect to a datum, and this is where the datum is set.
  2. Without it

    A stop is not a location, and the difference arrives as two separate errors.

    A blade or cylinder arrests the carrier's travel. The part on it still has inertia: it settles slightly past the stop and can rock back against it, and it can come to rest a fraction out of square with the frame. Stopped, yes. Located, no — nothing about arresting travel constrains the angle.
  3. What it actually is

    The lift takes the part off the conveyor before anything is measured from it.

    The positioning module raises the carrier clear of the line body, and locating pins take the part's position from the fixture rather than from wherever the carrier happened to halt. Precision stops being a property of the conveyor and becomes a property of the tooling. That is why the two motions are specified as a pair, and why a specification that only says “stop” has not told you what the next station receives.
  4. What it costs

    The same millimetre produces two completely different failures.

    At a hand station the part gets re-found before work starts: it still gets done, the cycle quietly grows, and what you see is takt variance rather than a fault — a segment that runs to plan in the morning and behind it by the afternoon. At an automated station there is no re-finding; the part sits outside the acceptance window, the station alarms and the line stops. The automated failure is the cheaper one, because it tells you.
  5. Why modules

    Modular means the locating tooling is a part you change and the line body is not.

    Positioning is built as modules along the line rather than as fixtures welded into it. What that buys you is the next section: a format change swaps tooling, not conveyor. The proof of the word “modular” is what happens at changeover — used any other way it is a description of a bracket.

The operator's side of this handover — why hand work on a moving line is repeatable at all — is argued on the pack assembly line page and is not repeated here.

Stop position on the conveying line where the carrier is arrestedSTOP

Where travel is arrested

A blade or cylinder holds the carrier at the station. Rendering — the moment the part stops moving, and the moment it is still not located.
Lift and locating pin mechanism under the carrier positionLIFT

Where position is taken over

The positioning module raises the carrier clear of the line body. Rendering — the locating pins that the next station's accuracy figure is measured from.
Module seated on locating tooling, clear of the conveying lineLOCATED

Located, not merely stopped

Rendering — the state the next machine is entitled to assume, and the one a specification that only says “stop” has not promised.

At a format change, the tooling changes and the line body does not

This is the practical test of a modular positioning system, and it is worth putting into a quotation before anyone signs it.

01

The locating tooling on each positioning module — the pins and pads that take the part

What stays

The line body, its length and its drive
02

The carrier fixture that holds the new module square

What stays

The positions of the stops along the line
03

Station-side tooling at the stations themselves, published per station on the two segment pages

What stays

The panelling, the guarding, and the layout drawn into your bay

Within the compatibility envelope, a format change is a tooling change — that is our published position on customisation, and it is the same sentence wherever it appears on this site. What is worth checking in any quotation is whether the word “modular” survives contact with that question.

We do not print a changeover time here

It depends on your format, your tooling set and who does the work, and a figure that ignores all three belongs in a brochure. The changeover sequence gets its own page. Cell compatibility and changeover →
Locating tooling detail on a positioning module
Rendering — the part that changes
Line body and drive section that is unaffected by a format change
Rendering — the part that does not

Send the module, and the stations at either end of it

A conveying segment is specified from what stands at each end of it — the module it carries, and which of the neighbouring stations are automated. Two lines of an email is enough to start.

Send the module and station list WhatsApp

Reply within 24 hours / If a plain conveyor is what you need, we will say so rather than quote a line

What each kind of neighbouring station needs the conveyor to have done

A conveying specification is an agreement with the stations at both ends of it. On this line there are four kinds of agreement.

Vision station positioned over the conveying line01 · VISION

A vision station

Finds the part inside a search window before it does anything. The window is generous but it is not infinite, and it is what a stop-and-lift tolerance is really being checked against. An off-datum part here does not produce a bad result — it produces a search failure and a halted line.
Laser welding station mounted across the line02 · LASER WELD

A laser welding station

Works to a seam whose position is derived from the fixture, not from wherever the carrier stopped. It has the least tolerance of the four for a part that arrived approximately, and it is the clearest single reason the lift exists at all.
Gluing station laying a path across a plate03 · GLUING

A gluing station

Lays a path across a plate. The path is only as repeatable as the plate's position, and a small rotation at the locating stage becomes a visible displacement by the far end of the path.
04 · HAND STATION

A hand station

Is the forgiving one, and that is precisely what makes it dangerous to specify against. It absorbs a poorly located part by having somebody nudge it, and then reports the problem as nothing at all.

Three of the four fail loudly and one fails quietly. Specify against the loud ones — the quiet one will not tell you when you got it wrong, and on a segment that is mostly hand work, the quiet one is most of the line.

Panelled on both sides, and what that costs you at the third maintenance visit

Why the panels are there is argued on the pack assembly line page. What belongs here is the other side of the trade: they stand between your maintenance team and the line body.

What being closed buys you

Argued once, on the pack assembly line page, where people stand beside this segment all shift. Not repeated here.

What being closed costs you

Everything below — and it is the half that only becomes visible after handover.

Everything inside the panels is behind a panel

Drives, sensors, the stop cylinders and the lift mechanisms sit inside the enclosed section. Reaching a stop cylinder means removing a panel first — every time, not the first time.

So access is a layout decision, not a commissioning decision

Which sections get opened routinely, which get opened once a year, and where a person can physically stand to do it are questions that are cheap now and expensive after the line is bolted down.

Tell us your maintenance access convention

Some plants want removable sections at every drive. Some want the aisle side clear and accept slower access from the wall side. Both are workable. Assuming which one you are is not.

A closed line is easier to run and harder to reach. That trade is worth saying out loud, because it is the one part of this specification that only shows up after handover — and by then the layout is concrete.

Side elevation of the conveying line with its panelling in place
Rendering — panelled along its length
Line body reached through an opened panel section
Rendering — what a panel stands in front of

Four things buyers hope a conveyor will fix, and it will not

All four come up in enquiries that start from the conveyor rather than from the line, which is the honest reason this page exists at all.

It will not raise your takt

The slowest station does that. A conveyor that gives back travel time gives back seconds inside a cycle whose length somebody else already set. Specify it against the rate you want rather than against your slowest station and you buy line speed you cannot use — the segment still runs at the bottleneck, and the budget went into the one component that was never able to move the number.

It will not rescue a station that cannot hold its own tolerance

Locating a part perfectly in front of a station that drifts produces a well-positioned bad part, on time.

It will not turn a hand-built segment into an automated one

The pack segment on these lines is mostly people, and the conveyor is what makes that workable — not what replaces it.

It will not specify itself

Its rating comes from your module, its stop positions come from your station list, and its tooling comes from your format. There is no version of this component that is independent of the line it sits in.
  • Turnkey line
  • Single machine
  • Segment retrofit
The station that sets the pace of the segment, with the line waiting on it
Rendering — the station that sets takt

We do supply conveying and positioning as a segment retrofit rather than only as part of a whole line. But we will ask what stands at both ends of it before quoting — and where the answer is other people's stations, we will say plainly what we can and cannot be responsible for.

Four questions to ask any conveyor line item, including ours

None of them needs a drawing, and all four separate a conveying specification from a length of steel with a rating written on it.

01

Does it say stop, or does it say locate?

Those are different claims about different things. A specification that only says “stop” has not described what the next station receives.
02

Is the load rating stated with the carrier and fixture, or without?

With is the useful one, because that is what actually travels down the line.
03

Is the positioning modular — and what does that word cover?

Ask which parts get replaced at a format change. If the answer includes the line body, the word is decorative.
04

Is conveying speed presented as throughput?

If it is, the specification is leading with the one figure that does not set throughput.

Our four answers, taken from this page: locate, with the fixture, tooling only, and no. Everything above was written so that those four answers can be checked against it rather than taken on trust.

Conveying section and carrier tooling seen together along the line
Rendering — the line item, in the metal

Where the stations, the thresholds and the envelope are written up

This page owns conveying and positioning, and nothing else.

  1. Module segment
  2. Pack segment
  3. Conveying and positioning — you are here
  4. Tier selection

Send the module and the two stations either side of the conveyor

That is the whole input. The rating, the stop positions and the tooling all follow from those three things.

What comes back

A conveying and positioning scope for that segment, the positioning modules it needs, and a plain statement of what changes if your format does.

If the answer is that you do not need us for it

Some segments are better served by whoever built the rest of your line. Saying so costs us a quotation and saves you a procurement cycle.
Go to the enquiry form WhatsApp
Located module being handed to the next station on the line
Rendering — the handover this page is about
Phone / WhatsApp
+86 15327155363
Address
Wuhan, Hubei, China
Response
Reply within 24 hours
Module and pack assembly line seen along its full length
Rendering — thirty-two stations, one line