A Hungarian company, Knipl Ltd. in Bonyhád, has won a major order that is also significant in terms of the size of the equipment. The company uses its own method, with the assistance of Siemens equipment, to coat battery trays for BMW’s North American factory. Martin Simon and Ákos Kiss, experts at Knipl Ltd., spoke to autopro.hu about the project.
Knipl Ltd. in Bonyhád has been commissioned to build a piece of equipment the size of three football fields at the plant of an American automotive company. What tasks is Knipl Ltd. performing in this project?
We are coating battery trays for certain SUV models at the site of one of BMW’s North American suppliers.
This is a fully automated line with six-axis robots, automatic transfer equipment, and chain conveyors.
At the beginning of the line, a basket containing 12 or 20 parts is loaded. This passes through the equipment: first, the KTL primer layer is applied, followed by powder coating, and then PVC coating in certain places for greater mechanical resistance. At the end of the process, the trays are transferred, and the coating is integrated into the assembly line. The equipment itself is located in a huge hall complex where the battery trays are manufactured.
We paint two sizes of trays here. The special feature of the process is that in the case of powder coating, approximately 60-70 percent of the workpieces must be masked and only the remaining surface must be coated with paint.
– Does the company use its own proprietary process to perform this task?
Powder coating itself is not a special process; it is used in a wide range of areas and tasks in the industry. What is more exciting is that our masking is fully automated – until now, this could only be achieved with disposable masking tape and subsequent vacuuming. We have built an automatic masking device for this task, which costs approximately $100,000 per unit. The equipment is fully automated and equipped with 40-50 actuators and sensors.
The applied powder layer increases the surface protection on the battery trays to approximately 200 micrometers, thus satisfying the required level of electrical insulation. I mentioned that we paint in two sizes: the tray itself consists of an upper and a lower element, into which the battery cells are placed. At the junction of the two elements and on the connecting surfaces, it is essential to have the appropriate powder coating to ensure proper electrical insulation.
The desired layer thickness can only be achieved if the workpiece is preheated to 120 degrees Celsius. This means that by the time it enters the spray booth and we start spraying the powder particles onto it, the workpiece has cooled to around 80 degrees Celsius, which is just enough to slightly gel the powder attracted to it, allowing this thick layer to be applied. It is not possible to apply such a thick layer with this surface quality in one go when cold, which is what makes this technology so special. The process itself is not our development, but no one has yet integrated so many elements into such a system, at least we have not seen any specific examples of this.
It is interesting to note that one battery tray is produced every 69 seconds on the line, which is the same amount of time it takes to produce a car in the factory.
-How did you manage to get from Bonyhád to a point where the company could meet the expectations of such a serious customer? What is the secret of your success?
Knipl Ltd. has been operating for thirty years now, and we have been working with KTL technology for twenty years, so we have considerable experience in this field. The customer approached us and a few other companies that deal with this technology. We made the best offer in terms of both price and professional expertise. We had already worked on several previous projects with BMW, which obviously contributed to us being considered.
The secret to our success is the operational reliability of our previously installed equipment and the use of innovative solutions. If they were not familiar with the quality we represent, if they had not heard of us before, it is unlikely that such large companies would have placed their trust in a Hungarian brand for such a large-scale project.
We are not talking about a small piece of equipment worth a few thousand euros that fits in a corner. The success of an entire series may depend on this equipment, and this process cannot be replaced from one month to the next. Winning such a project requires mutual trust, which can only be earned through many years of work.
– Is this Knipl Ltd.’s first order related to electric cars? How does the transition to electric vehicles affect the company’s operations?
No, we have worked with another German premium manufacturer’s supplier on battery trays, but there we had to passivate the surface, which required a different technological solution. There was also an example where we passivated battery tray components, so we already had some experience in the field of electric cars.
Electrification has opened up a lot of new projects for us. In the automotive industry, they plan many years in advance, so the projects we are working on now were decided two or three years ago. When OEMs saw that there would be a serious market for electric cars, they launched a lot of new projects, some of which we were able to win.
The design of the projects and the manufacture of the equipment are basically carried out at our site in Bonyhád, where we have a 10,000 m2 base at our disposal.
-What challenges does having a partner so far away present? What experience does the company have with overseas customers?
Practically speaking, the challenges are travel and local working hours, as well as American standards and the procurement of European accessories in America.
By the time we arrived in the United States, we had already completed numerous projects in Mexico, worked in China, and been commissioned for countless assignments in Europe, including Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and, of course, our home country.
– Implementing a system of this size requires significant software and PLC support. Who does Knipl Ltd. rely on in this area?
All of our equipment control cabinets are equipped with Siemens PLC controllers. We also use a number of other Siemens products, such as sensors, main switches, relays, emergency buttons, power supplies, and other components.
In addition, we use almost exclusively Siemens software: 3D designs are created in Solid Edge, and programs are written in the Siemens environment.
– Why did you choose Siemens?
It is a reliable company, we have been using its products for a long time, and our programmers, designers and colleagues are used to them. In the automotive industry, our hands are often tied anyway: our customers specify which products we have to use in each project – in 90% of cases, they expect us to use Siemens solutions.
Knipl Ltd. in Bonyhád employs around 300 people. Between 50 and 60 employees are working on the American project discussed in the article. Seventy to eighty percent of the company’s orders come from the automotive industry, and a similar proportion, 70-80 percent, comes from foreign partners, with Hungarian projects accounting for 20-30 percent. They were among the first in Hungary to introduce high-quality, state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly painting technology systems.
Source from: autopro.hu
25 August 2025