Battery manufacturing method and apparatus
AssigneesMatsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsShoji Karasawa, Yugo Nakagawa, Hiromi Kajiya
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Abstract
Positive and negative electrode plates, after being dried, are layered alternately upon one another with intervening separators therebetween to constitute electrode plate groups. These electrode plate groups are transferred in succession from one to another of a plurality of preliminary chambers, which are respectively constructed to be able to create vacuum of various levels and arranged so that the vacuum level is gradually increased, and finally introduced into a processing chamber in which the vacuum level is highest, where the welding of collector plates to the electrode plate groups is performed with an electronic beam irradiating device. After that, the electrode plate groups are taken out through a post-processing chamber.
Claims10
A battery manufacturing method comprising the steps of:
- drying a plurality of positive electrode plates and a plurality of negative electrode plates;
- layering the positive electrode plates and negative electrode plates alternately upon one another with intervening separators therebetween, thereby constituting electrode plate groups;
- assembling collector plates to the electrode plate groups;
- transferring the electrode plate groups with the collector plates from one to another of a plurality of vacuum chambers having different vacuum levels;
- providing said plurality of vacuum chambers each with a gate for receiving or releasing at least one electrode plate group of said electrode plate groups;
- performing a welding operation using electronic beams in one of the plurality of vacuum chambers in which a vacuum of sufficient level to effect irradiation of electronic beams is created;
- and
- said welding operation including welding at least one collector plate of said collector plates to an end face of at least one electrode plate group of said electrode plate groups.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.