Rolling Tension Research
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Role: Tesla - Process Development Engineer Intern under Cell Engineering Team
Summary: I have initiated a DOE on the 4680 battery cell jellyroll to identify root causes for some major quality issues from the fundamental level.
Skills: DOE, Solidworks, Engineering Drawing, Data Analysis, Instron, SQL, Pandas, Excel, CT Scan
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— Limited image sources and vague descriptions due to NDA —
As a process development engineer intern at Tesla under the 4680 cell engineering team, I worked on a project quantifying the physical structure of the 4680 jellyroll. The main purpose of this project was to understand Tesla’s 4680 cells from the fundamental level. By understanding the product from its fundamental level, Tesla is able to remove some major root causes of defects potentially benefiting the company $100M+.
More specifically, my responsibility was to design experimental methods to quantify the rolling tension and telescoping of jellyrolls and to determine the correlation between rolling tension settings and buckling points of the structure. As there was no previous work or research done on this matter, I had to initiate the project from the ground up. The very first step that I took was to do some individual researches on the static/dynamic rolling. After understanding the fundamentals, I’ve reached out to engineers in the related field to obtain insights from them. Then, I initiated a DOE to find the correlation between tension and buckling point within the jellyroll. At the end of my internship term, I was able to present the root cause of the problem with supporting data from the experiments - ultimately suggesting the potential solutions for it.
From this project, I have learn not only how to collaborate effectively with other engineers but also many different technical skills along the way including GD&T, SQL, CT scanning and more. Also, I was able to tackle an ambiguous project from ground up. This allowed me to understand the importance of prioritizing and focusing in vague projects.