Winchester, UK - VARTA Microbattery GmbH has launched a new battery system integration service aimed at providing customized battery solutions for manufacturers of portable and handheld electronic devices for the industrial, medical and communications markets.
VARTA is targeting businesses where battery choice is an important aspect of the design of their products and which plans to produce between 10,000 and 500,000 handheld, portable and wireless devices every year for the industrial, commercial, medical or automotive industries.
The CellPac Plus service aims to offer a break from the traditional battery design and manufacturing process, in which a portable device OEM sources discrete components including cells, connectors, casings and regulator ICs, and integrates them into a complete design in-house.
The CellPac Plus service is looking to deliver a total project management, end-to-end battery design solution from the initial specification through to volume product manufacture.
As part of the CellPac Plus service, VARTA will design and manufacture a complete battery pack that can be fitted into the OEM's end product at the assembly stage.
VARTA believes the OEM will benefit in two key ways. Firstly, the CellPac Plus service aims to offer OEM's improved device performance as the result of VARTA's CellPac Plus designers applying their specialist knowledge of the chemical and electrical functioning of cells. The service will enable every CellPac Plus battery pack to be tailored to meet the requirements of the device it powers.
Another key benefit for the OEM is that the CellPac Plus service will free up the OEM's internal design staff, which can now focus on core hardware and application design tasks.
VARTA claims that CellPac Plus offers a different approach from the traditional battery design and manufacturing process which involves a portable device OEM typically sourcing discrete components including cells, connectors, casings and regulator ICs, and integrates them into a complete design in-house.
By opting for CellPac Plus service, OEM customers are able to wotk with VARTA's design consultants to define an electrical and mechanical specification for the battery pack which can then be developed into a full battery design to meet a precise specification.
In practice the OEM should only need to define the power supply requirement, and the form factor, battery lifetime and charging cycle limitations. The CellPac Plus team will handle the design and manufacturing of the cells, and will deal with the aspects of the project that relate to the control and regulator electronics, connectors, housings and casing.
Gordon Clements, Sales and Marketing Manager of VARTA Microbattery, said: "Battery design is not a job that OEM designers want to be doing, or should be doing. Now, with the introduction of CellPac Plus, they do not have to."
"All the design aspects of the project will be carried out in Germany but once the customer has signed off the design then the complete package is transferred to the Far East for the production phase. We will be using two production centers. One will be based in Indonesia and the other in Shanghai, China".
"We are aiming for a typical design cycle time from agreed specification to sample that takes about six weeks to complete. Then there will be a 12 week period to carry out the pre-production procedures before shipping out to Asia. Once in the Far East we estimate it will be four weeks to achieve production volumes".
Related links and articles:
www.cellpacplus.com
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