Q&A with TRUMPF Singapore regional director laser division

Article By: Kathryn Gerardino-Elagio

Markus Lindemann, Regional Director Laser Division, Sales & Technology from TRUMPF Pte. Ltd Singapore, gave a speech, titled: Laser technology in E-mobility, during the recent Virtual ASEAN Automotive & Motorcycle Parts Manufacturing Summit, organised by Ringier Trade Media Ltd. In his speech, Markus talked about the most important laser application producing components for e-cars.

Markus Lindemann

He explained that E-mobility requires new production technologies for serial production of the e-car components. Moreover, the traditional lightweight design is still important because the weight of a car limit also the maximum range of an E-car with one battery load.

After the presentation, several questions were raised by the audience who wanted to find out more about TRUMP's laser processes including investments in South East Asia, and service centre in Indonesia. Below are excerpts during the Q&A.

Q1: Will TRUMPF offer customised machines to each of these laser processes?

Markus: TRUMPF will only share the laser application knowledge together with laser sources, laser optic and vision systems. For customised projects, we usually cooperate with local automation houses and machine builder to do the part handling and fixtures.

Q2: Do you use filler wire for welding the cap-can on a prismatic battery cell?

Markus: We only use filler wire if the material requires it. E.g. you cannot weld Alu 6000 series without cracks without using a filler way to change the materials specification in the welding seam. But the battery housings are made out of Alu 3000 series which can be welded without filler wire.

Q3: Is the "hairpin" design of the electrical motor already in serial production or is it more an R&D topic.

Markus: We have already installed many TruLaser Cell 3000 machines for this welding operations in serial production.

Q4: Do you see a lot of investments in the South East Asia for eMobility?

Markus: Most governments all around the world working on this topic. There are several approaches in Thailand, Singapore, Australia and Indonesia for local production of Li batteries. Moreover this topic goes along with autonomous driving. Hyundai has decided to open a tech centre and a production facility for eMobility in Singapore. Ground braking of this centre was just 2 weeks ago and they have shared their vision about mobility in Singapore in 2030. It looks very different from what you see today. Let's see how fast the automotive industry - and our habits as their customers - will change.

Q5: How do your service your lasers and machines in Indonesia?

Markus: We have a local sales and service team based in Cikarang. This team can help you to solve your issues even when the borders are closed for international travel. And if they would need help, they can easily get support from the regional service center in Singapore or even from Germany.

Our specialists in Singapore and Germany can connect with the machine or laser control and analyses the sensor data via remote access and look for the root cause. Don’t worry that your TRUMPF laser or TRUMPF machine will be down for a long time because of Covid19 travel restrictions.

Our mission is to further develop and digitally connect production technology, to make it even more efficient, precise and future proof. In doing so, we want to make manufacturing and it’s upstream and downstream processes more efficient. This is how we build the industrial world of tomorrow. TRUMPF is a market and technology leaders in machine tools and lasers for industrial manufacturing, and work with our innovations in almost every sector. Our software solutions pave the way to the smart factory, allowing us to implement high-tech processes in industrial electronics.