Innometry said Friday that it is accelerating the mass-production deployment of its next-generation 1PASS-RING CT system, a contactless scanning solution that eliminates physical handling to protect battery cells from potential damage.

Conventional CT systems rely on robotic arms or grippers to physically rotate battery cells during scanning. Innometry's advanced system instead uses a ring-shaped scanner in which the X-ray assembly rotates around a stationary cell.

The system also incorporates a straight-through logistics design, allowing cells to enter from one side, undergo nondestructive imaging and exit directly through the opposite end without reversing or rearranging.

CT inspection is an established quality-control step in battery manufacturing, allowing producers to verify internal features such as electrode alignment, overhang and weld integrity without cutting cells open. As battery production scales to electric-vehicle volumes, running such checks inline at production speed has become a key industry goal, with handling risk, floor space and throughput acting as the decisive constraints.

"The concept of rotating an inspection assembly around a fixed object has long been used in medical CT," the company noted. "However, our focus was on transforming this into an integrated platform suitable for deploying on battery mass-production lines. We successfully met all critical production-line criteria, from logistics routing and floor space optimization to scanning speed, repeatability and long-term reliability."

Integrating precision high-speed X-ray rotation with continuous linear transport presented significant technical hurdles. Innometry resolved these challenges through its hardware-design technology and motion-control software, achieving commercial-grade reliability.

The system delivers substantial operational benefits by streamlining cell handling and eliminating extra alignment steps. It reduces floor space requirements by 50 percent while boosting inspection speeds by 40 percent. Most importantly, it fulfills the battery industry's long-sought goal of contactless testing, preventing physical cell degradation during inspection.

"Through client evaluations, the 1PASS-RING CT battery inspection system has proven its deployment availability and technical reliability. We expect to rapidly expand its application from our client companies' new production lines to upgrades for existing lines," said Shin Jin-woo, head of the inspection technology center at Innometry.

Shin added that Innometry is finalizing development of a next-generation Helical CT system capable of continuous, uninterrupted scanning without stopping cells on the line, with plans to complete technical enhancements by the end of this year.

Founded in 2008, Innometry supplies X-ray and CT inspection equipment to major global battery manufacturers across South Korea, North America, Europe and China.