The first e-chain® for dry cleanrooms - E6.29

Battery production for the mobility of tomorrow

The days of the combustion engine seem to be numbered because the car of the future will be electric. The battery system is essential for electric mobility making lithium-ion batteries a key technology of our time - one that has been greatly refined in recent years.

To guarantee error-free production and long battery life, the production process must be continuously optimized. Battery production systems require special environmental conditions achieved by combining dry rooms and cleanrooms. System automation and the increasing number of plants has also increased the need for reliable cable guidance that meets these high requirements.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA has teamed up with the Cellforce Group to develop a mobile dry cleanroom "tent". Classic stationary cleanrooms are a suboptimal solution for some applications due to the long planning and implementation times, large space requirement, and the long-term occupancy of valuable production areas.

The new DryClean-CAPE®, a more flexible and cost-effective alternative, creates an environment that is not only high-purity, but also low-humidity. The tent-like cleanroom system consists of two different covers.

In the process, dryness in combination with freedom from particles are created independently by separate air treatment units. This unique combination offers an ideal, flexible production environment, and environment plays a decisive role in product quality, especially in battery cell and automobile production. That is why the IPA has now also developed a new type of certificate to document the ISO cleanroom classification under dry room conditions. The igus® E6 e-chain® series is the very first cable guidance system to be certified by the IPA under dry room conditions.

The result: ISO class 4. This makes igus® one of the pioneers in this area. The e-chain® was tested in a dry cleanroom with a dew point of -40°C, which corresponds to a relative humidity of <1% at room temperature of 22°C. The energy chain, which has been proven for many years, is now also suitable for safe use in dry room applications. At the same time, the E6 scalable crossbars are being subjected to an endurance test in a dry room in the in-house igus® test laboratory. They have already undergone 10 million double strokes - and the tests are still going. The durable e-chain made of high-performance plastics optimized for friction and wear is available directly from stock as a standard catalogue part with various inner heights, widths, and radii.