PIA stands for "Safety First"

The client of this project leads the world in automotive safety. Its main products include safety belts, functional steering wheels, steering rod – and airbags, for which PIA at the Ningbo site – in compliance with the highest safety and quality standards – has developed and manufactured a high-precision automatic production line for gas generators with a cycle time of 12 seconds per piece.

In the event of a vehicle collision, the gas generator burns the pressurized gas, resulting in a large amount of high-heat gas, which fully expands the airbag to protect the passengers. The safety requirements for such airbag gas generators (using gunpowder inside) are very high. Therefore, the safety of the entire production process as well as the high product quality was the primary goal during the manufacture of this line at PIA Ningbo.

In order to achieve the safety of the production process, PIA strictly implements the European CE safety standards. During the entire process, the operators are not exposed to the product and collisions between the products are avoided. To prevent damage to people and equipment, the gunpowder station has been insulated, an advanced explosion-proof running technology has been used and a unique adsorption process has been developed to collect the dust from the gunpowder.

In order to guarantee product quality and safety, the laser welding process must be carried out with high precision. Sources of danger – for operators, equipment and product – are the laser light as well as the high-temperature viscous slag. For this PIA uses a special structure black box and an imitation cover to avoid these hazards. For the quality control process of the gas generators, the production line is equipped, among other things, with symmetry detection and leak prevention testing of the aluminum film, dosage weight detection, welding point leak prevention testing, welding point CCD detection, pressing parts height and consistency detection.

The acceptance indicators of our customers have a high standard. For this production line, for example, a traceability system was required that could identify the cause of the defective parts. To this end, we have set up a data acquisition and analysis system that can now also be used in other projects. PIA was able to completely convince the customer of this line developed and produced in China – both with the quality delivered and the guaranteed process reliability. Thus, this project is another important step for PIA in the expansion of its global Safety business.