Involved partners
F-ISE, CSEM, EPFL, FSUNS and M10
Date of achievement of result
Wednesday 22 May 2024
Short introduction
We gathered at F-ISE using M10 matrix shingling automation to manufacture the first 25 stunning examples of SPHINX Matrix Shingled Freesuns Solar Roof tiles.……power was up 4% over PERC and this power lift BEFORE custom screen printing which would remove the completely redundant bus bars and 1mm2 tabbing squares providing a further big power lift!
Objective: The objective of the day was to understand each manufacturing step of a Matrix Shingled Freesuns Solar Tile. We had a team of 14 people and we assigned processes as follow:
- Cutting of Solar Cells
- Passivation of edges – not completed
- Programming of Shirkan 1 and preparation of single shingles
- Automatic layup of the TOPCON single shinlges into a matrix using ECA
- Unpack the top and bottom glass pieces
- Unpack and cut the POE encapsulant to size
- Prepare different bubsars length positive and negative approx. 40cm each
- Prepare comductive tape, black blocking tap and insulating foil
- Hand layup 25 tiles and laminate
- Electroluminence test each tile
- Install junction boxes
- Flash test
Research:
- The work researched was the manual task for each manufacturing step with a view to understanding the nature of the task and then using this information to determine an automation solution.
- The day focused on collecting all the information into process step cards, then the process step cards will be evaluated in the coming weeks to identify possible automation solutions, eg accurate encapsulant cutting.
Result: Every manual step was captured into a process step including video and photos. The data, process steps and metrics have been captured into hand written process cards collected by F-ISE for analysis of each single process – manufacturing step.
What will it be used for: The results will be used in the coming weeks, to solve the automation solution need for each manual step.
Impact: The impact will be to understand the influence automation design will bring into F-ISE productivity to manufacture solar roof tiles which in turn will allow a cost estimate to implement the automation to be developed and an ROI to be calculated so see if the automation solution is feasible there may be the possibility to implement some or all of the automation steps that would fulfill the objectives of the Sphinx project.
