Mondragon Assembly secures licensing deal for continuous string process

From pv magazine Spain

Mondragon Assembly, a Spanish PV production equipment supplier, has secured a licensing agreement for its continuous string process.

“The deal was made with one of the most relevant players in the solar industry,” a spokesperson from the company told pv magazine, without disclosing the name of the manufacturer.

This license is for its patent for its continuous string process, which has been its intellectual property since 2013. Mondragon Assembly claims the patent “offers results never before seen in the manufacture of strings.”

Several years ago, the Basque machinery manufacturer faced a legal dispute with a solar machinery manufacturer. The Chinese court ultimately ruled in favor of Mondragon Assembly.

The patented process is a manufacturing technique for continuous string processing, which purportedly eliminates the adverse effects derived from “first” and “last” cells. In this process, a cut is applied between two cells to create individual strings from an infinite string.

According to Mondragon Assembly, this system increases the productivity of stringing machines by 10%. In addition, it provides control over the ribbon/wire at all times, which increases the quality of the alignment and reduces the number of defective strings.