Battery Cell Formation and the ABB Robots Behind It

Battery cell formation is the step where a freshly assembled cell gets its first controlled charges and becomes a working battery. It is slow, it ties up floor space and electricity, and in a gigafactory it means moving huge numbers of cells in and out of charging racks and aging stores. This post goes back to Gaston Planté's lead plates and the long forming runs of the 19th century, then looks at how formation works in 2026 lithium-ion plants, what CATL and Comau announced this autumn, where ABB robots such as the IRB 6700 and Flexley Mover could carry the load, and what is still unsolved.

Tesla's Gigafactory 1 near Sparks, Nevada, in December 2019. Photo: Smnt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How battery makers formed lead plates by hand and by dynamo

The idea is as old as the rechargeable battery. In 1859 Gaston Planté built the first lead acid cell that could be recharged by passing a reverse current through it: two lead sheets separated by rubber strips, rolled into a spiral and set in dilute sulfuric acid. A new Planté cell held little charge. It had to go through a slow process called forming, in which repeated charging corroded the lead foils into lead dioxide and roughened them so they had more surface. At first the forming current came from primary batteries, which made it expensive.

A pallet of used lead acid car batteries, the chemistry Planté's forming process started. Photo: Lack Thereof / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Two changes made battery making an industry. After 1870, dynamos replaced primary batteries as the source of forming current, and the cost of producing batteries fell sharply. In 1881 Camille Alphonse Faure pressed a paste of lead oxide into a lead grid, so the active material was already on the plate and only had to be converted during the first charge, which battery makers still call formation. Plants formed plates either in tanks of acid or inside the finished battery. By 1915, when Thomas Edison posed beside one of his storage cells, batteries were made in factories.

Thomas Edison with one of his submarine storage cells at West Orange, 1915. Photo: unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Lithium-ion cells brought formation back as a major cost. Sony began selling the first rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in 1991, using Akira Yoshino's design. In these cells the first charges build the solid electrolyte interphase, a thin film on the anode that protects it for thousands of later cycles. After formation, cells rest in aging stores for days while their voltage is checked, because a cell that loses charge too fast may have an internal fault.

EVE Energy 18650 and 21700 lithium ion cells, the cylindrical format Sony first sold in 1991. Photo: Sevenethics / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Formation towers, CATL in Hungary and Comau in Slovenia

In a modern gigafactory, formation and aging take up whole halls. Cells arrive from assembly in trays, the trays go into tall racks where each cell sits in its own cycling channel, and after charging they move to aging storage before final grading. A conventional constant current formation can run for days. A review of gigafactory equipment cited by the Battery Design site puts formation and aging at up to 30% of a plant's production capital cost and about a quarter of its floor space, which is why makers work hard to automate and shorten it.

A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist checks coin cells being cycled in an environmental chamber. Photo: U.S. Department of Energy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Two pieces of news from late September show both ends of the scale. On 22 September 2026 CATL started trial production of cells on the first two lines of its plant in Debrecen, Hungary, which has 34 GWh of first phase capacity and is planned to reach 100 GWh. A day later Robotics and Automation News reported that Comau had delivered a laboratory scale formation and testing system to Slovenia's National Institute of Chemistry, with thermostatic chambers from -20 to +60 °C, standard tray positions and automated remote cell connection to cut manual handling and keep operators away from electrical risks.

Lithium coin cells clipped into a laboratory testing fixture, 2026. Photo: Chingo K / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

ABB comes at this from the robot side. In an ABB Robotics survey of car makers published this year with Automotive Manufacturing Solutions, 51% of respondents said EVs had become easier to build over the past 12 months and 41% said their manufacturing costs had fallen. ABB robots already work on battery module and pack lines, which our post on EV battery assembly covers. No source shows ABB supplying a formation hall. The products fit the job, though: an IRB 6700 can lift heavy stacks of loaded trays, and an IRB 460 or IRB 660 palletizer can stack and unstack trays fast at the rack entrance.

An ABB robot cell for battery modules at ABB's plant in Baden, Switzerland. Photo: ABB

Where formation automation goes next

One likely next step is more flexible transport. ABB's Flexley Mover AMRs, such as the P604, find their way with 3D visual SLAM, so a plant could send trays from cell assembly to formation racks and on to aging storage without a fixed conveyor between them. The same robots could feed a pilot line in a research lab like the one Comau equipped in Slovenia. Engineers would normally lay out such a hall and test robot reach, cycle times and collisions first in RobotStudio, before any rack is bolted down.

An ABB IRB 6700 lifts a large panel from a storage rack at dhp technology, the kind of move a loaded cell tray needs. Photo: ABB

Safety is the open problem that robots help with most. Formation and aging rooms hold thousands of charged cells, and a faulty one can overheat or catch fire, which is why the Comau system includes fire suppression and meets EUCAR safety requirements. Robots can do the loading and the removal of suspect cells while people stay outside, and ABB's SafeMove can limit where an arm may go near racks and doors. Fast formation protocols that cut days to hours would shrink these halls, but they must not harm the protective film on the anode.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Cost and skills will decide how fast this spreads. Some gigafactory projects are slowing: in late September Volkswagen's PowerCo pushed its battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, back two years to 2029. Plants that do get built need technicians who understand both battery chemistry and robot programming, and smaller labs need formation lines they can change between pouch, prismatic and cylindrical cells. Home buyers will never see formation, but the price of their next EV or home battery depends on it, since every cell has to pass through those racks before it can be sold.

Jagjit Nanda in Oak Ridge National Laboratory's controlled environment lab for building lithium ion cells. Photo: Oak Ridge National Laboratory / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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