With the rapid development of the power battery industry, the upstream winding machine market has undergone a qualitative "fission".
I still remember that around 2014, new energy vehicles and power batteries were on the eve of the explosion. Many equipment manufacturers with different qualifications were optimistic about the growing demand for the winding machine market and swarmed into the winding machine manufacturing team. One member. At that time, there were many participants, but the technical level was uneven. The high-end winding machine market was mainly occupied by Japan's CKD, KAIDO and South Korea's KOEM. In China, only Leading Intelligence (300450) had a place in the high-end field.
Several years have passed, and earth-shaking changes have taken place in the field of power batteries. Power battery companies led by CATL and BYD have performed well domestically, and have even gone abroad to compete with international power battery giants.
Domestic winding machine companies are also surviving the fittest, and their technology continues to catch up with or even surpass the international first-class level, and their market share in the high-end field is gradually expanding. At the same time, driven by the rapid increase in concentration of the power battery market, the market share of winding machines is also becoming more and more concentrated.
Research data from the Gaogong Industrial Research Lithium Battery Research Institute (GGII) shows that in 2018, the top five domestic lithium battery winding machine market share accounted for more than 90% of the market share. Among them, Leading Intelligence is far ahead of the second place, with a market share of more than 60%.
Industry veterans analyze that the next winding machine market growth will still be considerable, mainly focusing on power batteries and small digital devices (smart wearables). The market demand growth rate in the power battery field will be greater than that in the digital field. In addition, currently about 20% of the market share in the high-end field of power batteries is occupied by imported winding machines, which will generate some demand for import substitution.
From a technical point of view, the core technical difficulty of the power battery winding machine is how to ensure the quality of the battery, especially the safety, under high-speed winding. Whether it is the alignment of the pole pieces, the cutting off burrs of the pole pieces, or the control of dust on the entire machine, all are to ensure the safety of the battery. Soft-packed and square batteries require higher tension, while cylindrical batteries require higher efficiency. ***The same thing is that the requirements for burrs, dust, and safety are relatively high.
Generally speaking, the current technical indicators of domestic winding machine equipment are not much different from those of imported ones, and some even exceed them. They also have advantages in terms of price, customized supporting equipment, and after-sales service. It is a trend to replace imports.
Taking Pioneer Intelligence as an example, its square winding machine currently has a maximum linear speed of up to 2500mm/s, an alignment control of ±0.3mm through CCD closed-loop control, and tension fluctuation control within 5%; circular winding machines The alignment of the winding machine can reach ±0.2mm, the efficiency far exceeds that of domestic and foreign competitors, and the control of cell roundness is the best among its peers.
"The company ensures the cleanliness inside the equipment and dust control through fluid simulation analysis and simulation design. Alignment guarantee is achieved through CCD and software algorithms." The person in charge of Leading Intelligence revealed.
On the evening of December 26, 2018, Pioneer Intelligence announced that the company had signed a "Purchase Contract" with Tesla for lithium battery production equipment such as winding machines, cylindrical battery assembly lines, and chemical composition systems. 》, the contract amount is approximately RMB 43 million; on December 22, at the CATL 2018 annual supplier conference of "Core Era, Enjoy the Future", Lead Intelligent won the only "Excellent Supplier" award in the equipment category. Power battery giants have expressed their full recognition of the leading smart product technology.
Survey data shows that Leading Intelligence’s winding machines accounted for 45% of the global high-end market in 2017. As the world’s leader in winding machine equipment, how does Leading Intelligence replace imports?
The person in charge of Pioneer Intelligence revealed that in order to ensure the quality of high-end products, the processed parts of core components are all made by the company; the purchased parts of core components are mainly imported; and the core software is all independently developed by the company. . Lead has a professional non-standard precision machining technology R&D and production team, as well as imported precision processing equipment. Strong precision processing R&D capabilities and processing equipment accurate to um level have become the guarantee for the quality and advantages of Lead's products.
GGII research shows that with the improvement of quality requirements for power batteries and the increasing construction of smart factories, the current winding machine technology is developing in the direction of integration and intelligence: integration refers to connecting the front and rear processes , combine multiple machines into one to save labor and space; intelligence includes unmanned operation, automatic roll changing, automatic tension correction, automatic thickness detection, etc.
The person in charge of Pioneer Intelligence said that winding machine technology tends to be high-speed, high-precision, high-reliability, intelligent, and unmanned. Among them, unmanned is the future of power battery winding machines. The company has A mature intelligent logistics design team with a large number of successful use cases.
Taking the laser cutting and winding machine independently developed by Pioneer Intelligence as an example, one laser cutting and winding machine is approximately equal to 2 die-cutting machines + 1 traditional winding machine, which greatly saves space and Labor costs. At the same time, this product realizes the segmentation integration of die cutting and winding, saving the transportation process between die cutting and winding, and significantly improving production safety.