In recent years, companie’s investments in the production of the electric motor for automotive have exponentially grown. This very particular product typology, in its turn, needs very definite and complete testing processes, to make the motor highly performing.
The experience of Risatti Instruments , combined with the new technologies developed by the company, allow customers to reach the prefixed targets. The testing phase starts from the control of losses in the iron of the assembled stator stack (N1), to optimize all manufacturing phases and then to obtain the highest efficiency. This analysis is carried out also on the rotor (O166) where, in addition, it is also possible to assess the die-casting quality, detecting also eventual interruptions and blows of bars, as well as the aluminium quality, which notably decrease efficiency. Concerning instead the stator testing (H5), four standard tests are carried out: ohmic resistance, stiffness, SURGE and rotation sense, with the further addition of: measurement of the insulation resistance, measurement of the ohmic resistance in alternate, at different frequencies, for the control of copper losses and the detection of the presence of partial discharges.
The issue of finished motor testing follows: of both the only motor, loadless or loaded, with the detection of the characteristic curve, and equipped with reduction and differential gear to evaluate the overall efficiency. The scheme proposed here represents the ideal testing process with the machines by Risatti Instruments, produced according to its customers’ single requirements, with the addition of suitable lab instruments (H3) for executing all tests for the design assessment and life tests, as well as complete tests on batteries.
Among the several applications that require the resin-bonding or the vacuum casting, there are also electric motors, whose insulation is absolutely necessary to grant them very long duration. Air bubbles or resin gaps can diminish the motor insulation, damaging performances and service life. Moreover, a partial discharge between the ground and primary insulation can occur.
Another reason for avoiding bubbles is the decrease of the heat dissipation, provided by resin and essential for the long service life of the motor and the preservation of high performances. Therefore, the resin must be “forced” into all inner spaces of the motor (especially in undercuts and in windings). The only possible procedure is vacuum casting.
Demak, thanks to its vacuum casting system, can assure the total absence of air in resin (by means of efficacious degassing systems) and in finished products, too. Then, all dispensing systems used in these process types are equipped with vacuum cabins, but not only: Demak technology for vacuum degassing starts from the resin loading on the machine until the last dispensing time. An efficient vacuum dispensing process, together with epoxy resin featuring high thermal resistance, allows qualifying motors for all durability tests required by OEM.
Many manufacturers of motors, solenoids, coils and other assemblies continue to use traditional, manual soldering techniques for magnet wire connections in their products. This can be costly, both in terms of the time required to make these manual connections, and in terms of quality, given that such processes are difficult to control and may result in poor connections.
TE Connectivity (TE) offers alternative solutions for terminating magnet wire, whether it is copper, aluminum or a combination of both. The terminals and splices are supported with application tooling ranging from hand insertion tools up to customer specific machines. High speed, fully automated, integrated systems provide uniform terminations reliably at a very low applied cost. No pre-stripping, soldering or welding of magnet wire is required.
MAG-MATE terminals and SIAMEZE terminals utilize insulation displacement connection technology, while AMPLIVAR terminals and splices utilize compression crimp technology.
For over 90 years, GROB has been one of the primary global players operating in the development and production of manufacturing machines and lines. GROB’s customers include the most prestigious automotive companies in the world, their suppliers and several other renowned companies in various sectors.
With production plants in Mindelheim (Germany), Bluffton, Ohio (USA), San Paolo (Brazil), Dalian (China) and Turin (Italy) and service/sale subsidiaries worldwide, GROB is present all over the world. GROB Group generates a global turnover that exceeds 1.5 billion Euros, with a labour force of about 6,900 employees. GROB range goes from universal machining centres to highly complex production systems with automation function, up to encompassing manual assembling stations and fully automated assembling lines.
The broad product range includes also production plants for electric motors and assembling, battery lines and fuel cell technology. GROB engineers are accomplishing technological solutions for the spraying of motor components, for cutting high-strength turbine housings and for machining structural components and chassis. Through the development of GROB-NET4Industry, industrial proprietary software for digitalization and in-net connection of production systems, the company is making great strides in the digital future.
BTSRInternational operates in the design and manufacturing of electronic sensors for the quality control in the manufacturing chains of clothing-textile, mechano-textile and technical textile, besides operating for years also with solutions for the testing of metal wires (copper and precious metals).
CWF 2000 by BTSRÂ represents an innovative solution that goes beyond the state-of-the-art in the wire feeding technology and will unavoidably exert an impact on the wire winding sector. It is a highly technological multi-patented system, thanks to a completely new and different control modality of wire tension compared to the already known and more traditional ones, it allows reaching unprecedented process efficiencies and quality.
Due to its design and implementation, it allows feeding the wire in constant and uniform manner, irrespective of the speed of the wire itself, connected with the machine speed and the coil size, and of the coil section/shape. Based on the new concept of “dual drive system”, able to grant the perfect combination between the feeding control and the accumulation control, the new CWF 2000 represents the first “positive and driven” feeder released on the market. Compact and ergonomic, this device can be integrated on existing lines and can process wires from 0.014 to 0.6 mm of diameter.
Thanks to its intrinsic peculiarities, it allows programming up to three different values of wire feeding tension, without any interface/connection to the coil winding machine. Alternatively, up to 4 different values of wire feeding tension during the winding cycle, using two outputs of the digital coil winder. Keeping pace with Industry 4.0, the new CWF 2000 is based on control software that can be integrated also into the PLC of the coil winding machine where it is installed, with all consequent operational benefits. Available in two versions, (CWF2000 to work on machines with double winding and coil, and CWF2000 HCL for needle machines and needle winding machines), it finds applications in several sectors including manufacturers of ignition coils for automotive, of solenoids, of transformers, of relays, of stator and rotor windings for household appliance motors.
From the best Italian engineering and industrial tradition stems a flexible innovative reality, by mentality and sizes: Bluergo.
Appreciated on a world scale for the tachometer coils for washing machines and dishwashers, the company proposes solutions also in other sectors, where the diffusion of smart devices is steeply rising: from cooking to conditioning and automotive.
Organized in one factory in Veneto and one in Slovakia, to be close to its customers in Italy, in Europe and in the world, Bluergo proposes a range of solutions that go from stator coils to laminated and electronic transformers, from solenoid valves to tachometer coils, from injector for motors to electromagnets for servomechanisms, from antennas to ferrite wound components and power supplies.
Specialized in the design and production of electronic and electromagnetic components, the company represents a complete response to the requirements of the most different sectors, with customized products featuring a winning quality-price ratio. A high level of competitiveness assured by a team of 100 young and very motivated people, guided by a dynamic management and willing to accept new challenges unceasingly. All that with a significant productive capacity, with automated processes that benefit from an efficient quality management, with control systems that grant the highest standards, thanks to the use of SPC protocols and test equipment during the entire product development cycle.
AIDA is a top player supplier of high-speed presses, automation equipment and complete metal forming systems for EV motors, electric motors and generators laminations with the highest production quality standard of the market.
Since its foundation in 1917, the company has continuously evolved and today AIDA has production plants in Asia, Europe and Northern America with a global presence in over 60 countries worldwide; currently, AIDA has more than 80.000 presses installed worldwide, with capacities ranging from 35 to 4.000 metric tons. AIDA presses are used to manufacture a broad range of items including automobile components, appliance parts, electric and electronic components, connectors and terminals, and motor laminations.
AIDA manufactures a complete lineof metalforming presses, including gap, straightside, progressive die, transfer, high speed, cold forging and servo-driven mechanical presses. AIDA Service provides spare parts, technical support and presses related services as well, for instance, presses maintenance, presses relocation, presses revamping and second hand presses trade.
At the presence of the international corporate management and, invariably, of city authorities, the global giant of electronic and electromechanical equipment Ametek has inaugurated a new pole that, from Milan outskirts, aims at the core of the fourth industrial revolution.
by Roberto Carminati
What Ametek has accomplished in the Lombard factories at Ripalta Cremasca (Cremona) and Robecco sul Naviglio (Milan) has been “a fascinating travel that lasted as many as thirty years”. Moreover: “our history on the territory is a vicissitude of constant growth supported by the contribution of our precious human resources and, from the financial point of view, it is a successful course”. These concepts and words were used by the Vice President of the US multinational Matthew C. French to bid symbolically farewell to the two pre-existing manufacturing sites and to start now a new chapter where technological innovation and services are the protagonists.
At the end of last year, the giant of electronic and electromechanical equipment, which achieves a yearly sales volume of about four billion dollars, inaugurated in fact new headquarters at Peschiera Borromeo, in the outskirts of Milan. The company presented it as an event in great style, attended by local authorities and naturally by its customers and suppliers.
An excellence centre that favours synergies
As the Managing Director of Ametek Italia Srl – MAE Uwe Lorenz opportunely highlighted, “a sound tradition is the ideal foundation on which building the future”. The future of the brand, which relies on 150 manufacturing sites in the world employing 17,000 workers overall, precisely starts from here, from a plant that, in the intentions of the corporate management, is expected to stand out as a «global excellence centre»; in other words, to ranks as “a real reference point of international relevance where to make further progresses, working side by side”. The headquarters at Peschiera Borromeo take up an overall area of 7,500 square metres and host almost 230 employees whose number is going to rise again, in the management’s intentions. It holds a strategic position – it is located half way between the previous locations at Ripalta Cremasca and Robecco sul Naviglio – and its propensity is also, or even mainly, strategic. “The aggregation of activities and the unification of processes will favour the creation of new synergies to full benefit of the development of our business units”, Uwe Lorenz told concerning this. He was echoed by the Managing Director of Ametek Srl Stefano Milani, in whose opinion, with the initiative accomplished in December 2018, “the competitive capacity of Ametek” in the segment of «precision instruments for the Italian market” will receive “new boost”, thus strengthening the ranking of a supplier that, by full title, thinks of “always having been in the forefront of the innovation and development of new products”.
Expansion strategy
Until now, the Group’s expansion strategy has been strongly driven by takeovers and such will of growing by external lines is well witnessed by the big number of brands grouped by each of its business units. Everything started in this way, in our Country as well, with the takeover of a local company about thirty years ago, in 1990.
Uwe Lorenz, Managing Director of Ametek MAE Italia srl
The aggregation of activities and the unification of processes will favour the creation of new synergies
As important are the other three bearing pillars of Ametek’s activity in Italy and in the world, i.e. operation excellence, product innovations and the international growth. “We own – further pointed out Stefano Milani – “dozens of business units worldwide and some refer to highly renowned brands operating on the domestic territory, too. In our new factory at Peschiera Borromeo we can welcome customers and potential buyers in a fully renovated environment that houses laboratories and showrooms, too. Being closer to customers results in higher efficacy, in line with an ambitious growth plan”. Highlighting development potentialities is not fortuitous and also the municipal councillor of Peschiera Borromeo Franca Costa affirmed “to be impressed by such a broad project of integration and economic development on the territory”, consistently with the local policy welcoming entrepreneurial initiatives. Moreover, coherently with the staff management policy that characterizes the manufacturer and starts from the idea that the quality of products also depends on the specialization and education opportunities the company can assure to workers.
Matthew C. French, Vice President of the US multinational, Stefano Milani, Managing Director of Ametek Srl and Uwe Lorenz, Managing Director of Ametek MAE Italia srl
The fourth industrial revolution, according to Ametek
Mauro Garantola, Marketing and Sales Manager of Ametek Italia Srl – MAE explained in an interview how all this can turn into an Industry 4.0-oriented strategy: “Digitalization, which represents one of the key elements in the shifting to the fourth industrial revolution is a growing trend in our customers’ project specifications; it is clear that, in this innovative transition, we are fully involved in the research and development of solutions for our partners”.
The meaning of the operation that was accomplished in the record time of six months only, as the multinational underIined in its official releases, is also another: “this site”, added Garantola, “is aimed at grouping functions that were previously distributed in different sites and its purpose is essentially logistic and organizational. It witnesses to what extent we believe in the fulfilment of new synergies». And of how strongly Ametek, we daresay, believes in its own growth potentialities: “This is our goal”, Garantola finally states, “concerning both human resources and engineering and sales. Regarding the future, we envisage excellent opportunities for a further successful consolidation, especially in the ambits of industrial automation and of medical technologies”.
Against the background of the paradigm shift in the powertrain of the motorcar, a research and development team was set up at GROB three years ago tasked solely with the theme of electromobility. Working in close collaboration with wellknown representatives from the automotive industry, it quickly became clear that there was a great need for mass production installations in the automotive industry, with a particular focus on key components, namely the electric motor and battery components. In order to accelerate the development work, GROB acquired a renowned partner in machine and plant engineering for electric motors, DMG meccanica, benefiting from its expertise in winding and inserting technology. In tandem, a dedicated development and application center for electromobility was created in Hall 2 at the factory in Mindelheim. Spread over more than 2500 mq² (27,000 ft2), work is under way developing and testing processes and methods in machines and installations in collaboration with the automotive industry. The goal is mass production of highly effective electric motors with completely newly developed technologically, as well as of very compact battery modules with high power density.
The challenge facing GROB now is the task of translating these yet unknown processes and methods into precisely timed movements and workflows in completely newly developed CNC machines. The new, highly flexible and servo-controlled machines are used for mass production of the stator and rotor electric motor components. In stator production, in particular, there are various manufacturing techniques for guiding the copper wires into the slots of the stator. The new GROB machine portfolio covers the entire production process for an electric motor, from various winding and shaping processes for the wires to assembly, to contacting.
The new GROB machine portfolio covers the entire production process for an electric motor, from various winding and shaping processes for the wires to assembly, to contacting.
One of the core processes in the production of an electric motor is the process of guiding the copper wires into the stator. GROB covers all known processes here, including wave winding technology, the hairpin process and fan-coil technology. GROB Italy Srl also covers the winding/inserting technology as well as the needle winding. This means that GROB can market and operate all the production processes required in the automotive industry.
Electromobility spurs the whole company on
When GROB created a new third division ten years ago with the launch of universal machines, it managed to build directly upon the image of the G-modules, since GROB, as a turnkey supplier in the systems business, already had an excellent reputation in the market. It is not the same with ‘electromobility’. With its technology, it is calling for a new way of working and, thus, for changes in approach. While the processes used in existing divisions form the basis and serve as models, it is important to remember that e-mobility is still a relatively new concept for the automotive industry. All market operators have to adjust their approach. Projects are currently only being set up and developed in close consultation with the automotive industry. Many coordination meetings within the project teams of both parties are needed. This is in contrast to our core business of ‘system machines’, where our business is very much up and running. Sales have been enhanced with the recruitment of specialists with experience in electromobility. Customer inquiries are coordinated in an internal sales meeting and are allocated depending on the technology. A project team consisting of project management, innovation management and sales will then be formed to work out the best possible alternative for the customer.
Electromobility is on the rise worldwide
Since GROB has a very good reputation as a turnkey supplier in the automotive industry, we are highly valued as a partner on joint further development projects.
German Wankmiller, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer at GROB-WERKE
‘Not only that’, said German Wankmiller, ‘we already have a command of the complete process and technology and can market it.’ Even though markets are reacting to this at different speeds, GROB sales has adapted to the new technologies right around the world. Within the GROB Group, there is a uniform approach and sales structure which are closely coordinated with the headquarters in Mindelheim. Europe – more especially Germany – and China are pioneers in the field of electromobility. Within the next few years in China the number of electric vehicles will be fixed by law and consequently there is significant investment there. Initial projects are already in progress at GROB. To sum up, it can already be said that GROB is fully geared up for the theme of ‘electromobility’, identifies demand on the basis of market analysis, develops the right products and is already in a position to deliver. We make large development capacities available and have a dedicated team of designers on hand to develop these innovative technologies further.
Just over a year ago, at the end of January, 2017, GROB acquired a one-hundred percent share in DMG meccanica, the leading manufacturer of machines and systems for the production of stators for electric motors and generators.
The Group took this step in order to strengthen its many years of research and development work in the field of electric mobility. By combining technologies from DMG meccanica with processes developed in-house by GROB, the Group can now offer and supply all production processes and procedures for electric drives for the global automobile industry. Last year, the Group received the first major orders for the new generation of electric drives from the German automotive industry and its Chinese joint ventures, thus confirming the successfully implemented strategy of diversification with new products and orders.
Gruppo DMGmeccanica
Following the acquisition, DMG meccanica became part of the GROB Group without any changes being made to its corporate structure. To complete its integration and optimize its structure, DMG meccanica has undergone the final step of the acquisition and been renamed GROB Italy Srl. The Management Board remains unchanged and continues to consist of the DMG meccanica company founders Mr. Marco Debillo and Mr. Mauro Marzolla.
Sales and service branch GROB Italia (Turin), headed by Managing Director Mr. Antonio Goia, will be integrated into GROB Italy Srl during the course of 2018.
As such, GROB Italy Srl will comprise two corporate areas in the long term: DMG meccanica will be renamed as GROB Italy.
This structured initiative points the GROB Group the right strategic direction and also puts us in the ideal position to master new challenges in the future and meet the needs of our customers.
