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New battery joining technology at TWI: Hesse BJ985

Tue, 26 March, 2019

TWI has recently added a Hesse Bondjet BJ985 to its capabilities, to provide support to industry in addressing challenges around the joining of battery cells. Wire bonding is a long-established, high reliability, solid-state welding technique, used mainly for making interconnects in the electronics sector. The BJ985 is a fully automatic, heavy wire wedge bonder with a large working area capable of automatically forming joints in a range of materials, including aluminium and copper. Heavy gauge wire and ribbon from 50 µm up to 600 µm can be handled with only one bond head, forming current-carrying joints on large-sized substrates such as batteries and power electronics, particularly in automotive applications. The BJ985 can be used as a fully automatic machine suitable for production environments, or operated manually to form the cell to bus bar connection. More information about the capabilities of the Hesse Bondjet BJ985 can be found here.

This new facility is supported by TWI’s bondtester facility (Nordson DAGE) which can be used for new product development as well as full weld characterisation. This complements TWI’s capabilities in both destructive and non-destructive testing as well as development of more reliable and cost-effective battery solutions for electric vehicles.

Dr.-Ing. Michael Brökelmann, from the Research & Development department of Hesse GmbH will be presenting on ‘Ultrasonic Bonding for Automotive Semiconductor and Battery Applications’ at the upcoming MicroTech 2019 conference being hosted at the Granta Centre at TWI's headquarters near Cambridge.

Hesse Bondjet BJ985
Hesse Bondjet BJ985

For more information please email:


contactus@twi.co.uk