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Oerlikon Solar Ltd.
Hauptstraße 1a
CH-9477 Trübbach, Switzerland
www.oerlikon.com/solar
Area of business: Development
and manufacture of tried and
tested systems and turnkey
production lines for the
production of environmentally-
friendly thin-film solar modules
Efficiently tempered:
The flow sensor SFAW controls
the amount of cooling water as required.
The lift on the exit lock
incorporates pneumatic axes DGC.
The low-cost axis ELGR ensures constant speed.
“In a project as challenging as the TCO deposition
system, choosing the right automation partner is
important. They must understand our requirements
and contribute their own ideas.”
Michael Clauss, Product Development Manager, Oerlikon Solar
100 football pitches
The new TCO system represents a major
leap forward compared with its prede-
cessor: “With the second generation we
have almost doubled the annual capacity.
It coats 300,000 sheets of glass every
year. This corresponds to around 100
football pitches,” explains Clauss. The
maintenance and cleaning intervals have
been extended by 75%. As each cleaning
process means half a day of downtime,
customers of Oerlikon Solar are thus able
to significantly improve their productivity.
“The productivity increases have been
eagerly awaited by the manufacturers
of thin-film modules,” says Clauss. But
this is by no means the end of the Swiss
company’s achievements. Oerlikon Solar
has broken the world record for the low-
est module production costs with € 0.5
per Watt peak and stabilised efficiency
of 11.9% in the champion laboratory cell
with thin-film silicon technology.
www.festo.com/catalog/elgr
www.festo.com/catalog/dgc
1.2012
trends in automation
Synergies
34 – 35