ELECTRIC VEHICLES
MEETING THE EV MANUFACTURING CHALLENGE
Life as a manufacturer of electric vehicle components is an exciting one. OEMs are racing to launch EV products while the underlying technologies evolve at a rapid pace. The folks in the marketing departments seem to be well into their third martini when projecting sales volumes. And everyone is looking at you to stand up a manufacturing line for a part that only exists in CAD.
If you are asking yourself these questions, Kinemetrix can help you with the answers.
Where do I find expertise on cutting edge processes?
How can I scale my investment with actual volume?
How do I buy equipment when product designs are rapidly changing?
ELECTRIC MOTOR ASSEMBLY
Split Segmented Stators & Hairpin Stators
As OEMs seek performance and efficiency improvements, motor designs are becoming more difficult to manufacture.
Stators designed with Segmented Cores and Segmented Coils provide performance gains but require manufacturing processes to join the coils.
Stators designed with Rectangular Wires – Hairpin, I-Pin, and others – offer their own performance advantages, but present even greater manufacturing challenges. The coils are now replaced with individual bent wire segments, dramatically increasing the joint count.
The copper joints of these stator configurations are very challenging to weld. The position of the leads are not consistent. As a result, weld gaps and torch standoffs can vary greatly, and just one bad weld can scrap a valuable part. The task is beyond the capability of most welding processes.
Agile3D CopperWeld solves the challenge of joining small copper leads. It can:
Weld rectangular wire leads of Hairpin Stators
Weld wound bobbin leads to the bus rings of Segmented Coils
Weld wound coil leads to the bus rings of Segmented Stators
With Agile3D CopperWeld, a high frequency TIG torch is combined with 3D vision to weld and inspect, combining all these functions into a single machine.
Locate copper leads in 3-dimensional space
Judge the leads for weldability
Guide the weld torch to a position optimized for the lead condition
Join the leads
Inspect the resulting weld
