THE TECH windings are also well-suited to liquid cooling, which further enhances performance and reliability. One example given in the paper showed that, when one particular induction motor design used a hairpin winding configuration, maintaining the same slot area, “the maximum starting continuous torque increases by 44% from 180 Nm to 260 Nm, while the maximum continuous power sees an increase of 17% from 135 kW to 158 kW.� It’s no wonder that many automakers design motors that implement hairpin stator winding for EV traction applications. One Italian company, Tecnomatic, has built its entire business around helping automakers with design manufacturing processes for hairpin stator systems. Charged recently chatted with Maurilio Micucci, Project Manager at Tecnomatic, to learn more about the company and its technology. Q Charged: How long has Tecnomatic been develop-
ing specialized hairpin stator assembly systems?
Images courtesy of Tecnomatic
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A Maurilio Micucci: Tecnomatic was founded in
1973, so we have more than 40 years of experience. The company was founded for the design and development of special machines for stator winding and motor assembly. And then in the last 20 years, we focused on hairpin technology, beginning with things like automotive starters and alternators in 1999. Since then we have developed a very long history with hairpin stator technology, and today we develop a fully-automatic system for manufacturing hairpin stator systems. The first project we worked on related to traction motor applications began over 10 years ago with Delco Remy. We started to develop that process around 2003, then we finalized the design, and those motors were used in GM hybrid vehicles like the Yukon and Tahoe. Today we design special hairpin machines for lots of different stators - they range from lower-voltage applications like starters and alternators to bigger applications like traction motors - so from 14 V to 600-700 V or more. In the end, the process to manufacture them is similar, no matter the size or voltage. What changes sometimes is the specific materials like lamination steels, copper and insulation.