Focus: Giga-Casting Motor Housings and Battery Trays for Electric Vehicles

The transition to New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) has forced the automotive industry to adopt "Giga-Casting"—large-scale integrated aluminum structural parts. These components present unprecedented challenges for finishing due to their size, dimensional variance, and the dangerous nature of aluminum dust. This paper details Kingstone's implementation of a laser-compensated robotic deburring system that increased throughput by 350% while ensuring 100% workplace safety.

To maximize EV range, weight reduction is paramount. High-pressure die-cast (HPDC) aluminum components allow for complex geometries that replace dozens of stamped steel parts. However, HPDC creates significant "flash"—excess metal at the die seams—that must be removed without compromising the vacuum seal or the structural mounting points.

Aluminum dust is highly flammable and potentially explosive. Traditional manual deburring creates an environment that requires extreme PPE and poses a constant fire risk to the factory.

A motor housing casting that is 800mm wide can experience up to 4mm of warping as it cools. A fixed robotic path will either miss the burrs or cut into the part's wall, leading to structural failure.

Cooling channels and internal cavities require deburring tools to reach deep into the part, necessitating high-payload robots with long reaches and precise path control.

Kingstone engineered a multi-station cell featuring an orange 60kg-payload robot and a suite of adaptive tools.

Every part entering the cell is first scanned by an integrated 3D Laser Vision System.

• Measurement Accuracy: ±0.02mm.
• Real-Time Offset: The vision system compares the scanned cloud to the master CAD model. If the parting line has shifted due to die wear or part warping, the robot's entire toolpath is shifted in 6 degrees of freedom (X, Y, Z, Roll, Pitch, Yaw) before the tool makes contact.

The robot utilizes an automatic tool changer (ATC) to switch between three specialized heads:

1. High-Torque Milling Head (2.2kW): To remove heavy flash (up to 3mm thick) from the main gates.
2. Flexible Compliance Tool: A pneumatic tool that maintains a constant force to "break" edges and remove fine burrs without altering the part's chamfer geometry.
3. Internal Radius Tool: A specialized narrow-neck tool for cooling channel entries.

The KS-RoboDeburr Cell is a fully enclosed unit with an Integrated Wet-Type Dust Collector.

• Principle: Aluminum dust is immediately sucked into a water-curtain filtration system, turning the dry powder into a non-flammable slurry.
• Safety Rating: Meets ATEX/NFPA explosion safety standards, allowing the factory to operate without the constant fear of dust-related incidents.

By eliminating repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) and reducing rework by 95%, the system delivered a TCO reduction of 38% over three years compared to the manual alternative. The initial investment was recovered in 14 months solely through labor savings and yield improvement.

As automotive manufacturers move toward even larger castings, the requirement for "intelligent" deburring—systems that can see and adapt to the metal's variance—will become the baseline for Tier-1 suppliers. Kingstone's vision-guided approach provides the scalability needed for the high-volume NEV market.