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Festo AX for Renewable Energy Industry

Predictive maintenance for vacuum grippers

In the field of new energy lithium battery manufacturing, vacuum systems are a core link to ensure continuous production and product quality. As a global leading lithium battery manufacturer, the customer’s production line heavily relies on vacuum grippers to complete key processes such as cell handling, electrode sheet bonding, and packaging. However, due to long-term high-frequency operation, exposure to corrosive gases (such as electrolyte vapors), and mechanical wear, vacuum grippers are prone to latent faults like seal aging and cracks, resulting in vacuum loss or sudden leaks. If these faults are not detected timely, they directly cause production line stoppages, product yield decline, and increased emergency repair costs.

Key Pain Points:

Traditional vacuum system maintenance mainly relies on “regular inspections + reactive repairs”:

  • Regular inspections depend on manual visual checks or simple pressure tests, which cannot detect minor leaks and have a high miss rate;
  • Reactive repairs mean downtime and emergency fixes only after faults occur, failing to meet the lithium battery industry’s requirements for “high continuity and zero defects.”

Festo AX Solution:

  • Data Access and Status Monitoring: Utilizing the Festo AX platform, key data such as vacuum generator operating status, vacuum level curves, and energy consumption for maintaining vacuum are collected in real time via standard protocols like MQTT, enabling millisecond-level monitoring of vacuum system operation.
  • AI Analysis and Intelligent Alerts: The Festo AX Vacuum Insights application incorporates advanced AI algorithms to learn and establish a “health baseline” for each vacuum circuit’s normal operation. By continuously comparing real-time data with the baseline model, the system accurately identifies abnormal trends such as slow vacuum build-up, minor leaks, and reduced pressure retention.
  • Predictive Maintenance Decisions: Once the analysis indicates a fault risk, the system proactively issues early warnings via intuitive dashboards or mobile push notifications, generates maintenance work orders, and clearly identifies the specific suction cup or generator location and severity of performance degradation. This enables maintenance teams to perform precise maintenance during planned downtime days or weeks in advance, avoiding faults during production.

Highlights and Results:

  • Significantly Improved Equipment Availability: AI-based predictive maintenance enables early warnings and proactive interventions, reducing unplanned downtime at related workstations by over 20%, effectively ensuring continuous and stable production and output targets.
  • Reduced Maintenance and Quality Costs: Shifting from reactive to planned maintenance lowers emergency repair labor and spare parts costs, with maintenance expenses expected to decrease by 50%-60%.
  • Clear Return on Investment: The solution helps customers avoid production interruptions and product scrap losses caused by vacuum system faults, delivering considerable annual ROI per device.

Beyond battery production, Festo AX predictive maintenance solutions in the new energy sector provide real-time equipment health monitoring, fault prediction, and optimized maintenance planning, enhancing reliability, production efficiency, and overall value across multiple sub-sectors such as:

  • Key component monitoring for coating and rolling machines, using algorithm packages to track cylinder life and predict sealing leaks and piston rod wear of scraper pressure control cylinders in advance.
  • Dynamic optimization of winding and injection machines.
  • Full lifecycle management of lithium battery equipment.

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