Introduction: When Millimeters Mean Safety
In cell manufacturing, cathode-anode overhang is a strictly enforced safety dimension. Insufficient overhang risks short circuits and thermal runaway, while excessive overhang throttles cell capacity and consistency. To guarantee both performance and safety, manufacturers can no longer rely on sampling or offline guesswork. Securing the line requires 100% inline measurement, capturing highly accurate dimensional data on every single cell without disrupting production speeds.
The Challenge: Automating In-Line CT Analysis
To ensure cell safety and consistency, the manufacturer required 100% in-line overhang measurement. However, processing off-the-shelf CT imaging data at full production speed is a significant technical hurdle.
CT scans of dense electrode stacks contain visual noise and artifacts that cause traditional vision systems to drop data points or misread images. To secure the line, the manufacturer needed a high-speed automated system capable of maintaining extreme accuracy despite the complex imaging environment.
The Measurement Target:
The system must reliably isolate every electrode tip in the scan. It must then compute the exact dimensional gap (the overhang) between each cathode layer and its corresponding anode layer for the entire cell stack.
CT cross-section of battery cell electrode stack: each electrode tip must be precisely located to compute the cathode-anode overhang distance.
The Solution: CorteX AI on Existing CT Hardware
Rather than overhauling the line with new imaging equipment, UnitX transformed the customer’s existing off-the-shelf CT machines into high-speed, intelligent inspection gates.
By connecting directly to the CT machine’s data feed, the UnitX CorteX AI system processes the heavy, noise-filled X-ray images in real time. The AI instantly isolates the electrode tips, computes the overhang measurements, and uploads the data directly to the MES for full traceability—delivering 100% in-line coverage without disrupting the existing workflow.
CorteX connects directly to the CT machine data feed, performs measurement inference, and pushes results back to the equipment and MES — no additional imaging hardware required.
UnitX Solution:
- CorteX AI System: Real-time inference on CT image data with automatic MES upload.
Results: Securing the Line with AI Precision
The UnitX solution successfully automated the high-stakes overhang measurement process, proving that in-line CT inspection can be both extremely fast and highly precise.
- Pixel-Level Accuracy: Delivering reliable measurements within ± 3 pixels, the AI accurately isolates the safe boundary between cell capacity and thermal runaway risk.
- No Production Bottlenecks: With a rapid 2-second cycle time per image, CorteX processes the dense X-ray data without throttling the factory floor.
- Unmatched Noise Penetration: The advanced networks consistently detect >95% of electrode points and process 80% of all cells without a single imaging misread.
Defect Visualization
The images below show AI-annotated overhang measurement results for both X and Y axis cathode/anode networks. Each electrode tip is automatically located and the inter-layer distance computed — results are color-coded and uploaded to the MES with full traceability.
X and Y axis cathode/anode overhang measurement: AI locates each electrode tip and computes the overhang distance, flagging any value outside the specified tolerance band.
Conclusion
Overhang measurement is too critical to leave to manual review and too complex for rule-based vision. UnitX CorteX brings AI-grade precision to CT data already being generated on the line,
delivering 100% coverage, real-time results, and full MES traceability without any new imaging hardware.
Eliminate manual CT review from your cell line.
Contact UnitX to discuss automated overhang measurement.
