In the Limelight: Light cure adhesives enable innovative improvements in stepper motors

摘要

Every day more than 15 million electric motors are manufactured across the globe. While the specific performance requirements and manufacturing challenges for each individual motor design vary significantly, the challenges manufacturers encounter are generally very similar. Global competition is creating severe pricing pressure in the industry while innovative new features or performance improvements are necessary to grow market share. Customization is also becoming more prevalent resulting in smaller manufacturing batch sizes at the same time that motors, themselves, continue to decrease in size and increase in performance, resulting in higher operating temperatures and rotational speeds. To remain competitive in this environment, innovative new product designs and lean manufacturing techniques are becoming a necessity for motor manufacturers. Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating all waste in manufacturing processes. To accomplish that, the design and manufacturing teams must work closely together to continually improve products and processes. Critical focus areas are decreasing the time to manufacture, reducing batch size and, where possible, moving to continuous flow processes; all while upholding the high quality standards of the industry.