Ultra-Low Cost Intelligent Flexible Automation for Custom Solar Cell Arrays

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LightLeaf Solar produces custom solar arrays for contoured surfaces, to custom fit recreation or sport vehicles, and commercial vehicles. The company is growing, and scaling production volume requires training more skilled workers to assemble individual cells into strings (rows) of cells, and then into rectangular arrays that can be fit into contoured panels. In order to be price competitive while maintaining profitability, LightLeaf needs to implement a scalable automated or semi-automated assembly system. Fully automated systems to produce large quantities of identical panels exist, but require extensive capital investment, and don't have the flexibility to produce custom panels. Using traditional electronic assembly automation components to build a fast and dedicated flexible automation systems is very expensive, making it difficult for a small company to grow incrementally without the financial risk of a large capital investment. This research is to determine if ultra-low cost intelligent automation can be used to perform efficient and reliable production of multi-cell arrays for producing contoured solar panels. If the reliability and accuracy required can be obtained with this ultra-low cost intelligent flexible automation, it can be scaled to increase throughput by running multiple systems in parallel, which will also make the overall system more reliable because there is no single point of failure. The project with Saskatchewan Polytechnic's Research in Additive Manufacturing and Prototyping (RAMP) facility will examine the feasibility, accuracy and reliability of ultra-low cost intelligent flexible automation.