General Electric Company

Louis W Pieper

Richard E Lauer

Apparatus involves advancing wedge material stock and also substantially permanently forming the stock material to precise dimensional tolerances by squeezing and deforming the material with pinch rollers. Deforming of the material includes pinching the material and thereby reducing the thickness of the material at preselected locations, with the reduced thickness portions of the material establishing precise dimensional tolerances of wedges produced by the process. A wedge magazine comprises the lower tooling of a coil injection machine and forms, in effect, an extension of tool gaps that accommodate winding coils in a coil injection machine. The magazine receiving the wedges may be a short term storage magazine which in turn feeds the wedges to a wedge magazine that forms the lower tooling of a coil injection machine. The present invention is of primary use and benefit in multifunction machines that perform the multiple functions of: making wedges for stator cores, inserting coils of winding turns into stator cores, and placing the wedges in at least selected slots of a stator core. Pinch wheels or rollers are contoured and dimensioned so that wedge material being rolled therebetween will be reduced in thickness at accurately located regions and formed into a desired configuration. The forming of the wedge material by the wheels results in wedges having precisely controlled dimensional tolerances and dimensional stability, with the result that the wedges lie squarely in stator core slots (when the wedges are inserted into such slots), and 'wire over wedge' problems associated with skewed wedges in stator core slots are overcome.

Methods for making and using slot closure wedges at a coil injection

Methods and apparatus for selecting increments of relative travel of portions of at least one coil insertion apparatus in response to the actual height of a selected magnetic core and interdependently adjusting the mechanical interrelationships between two or more parts of winding turn establishing means of winding apparatus so as to provide one or more turns of conductive material having a size and shape that is particularly adapted for placement in slots of the selected magnetic core. During the interdependent adjustment, one or more additional coil insertion apparatus may be interdependently adjusted. In one approach, a gauge measures actual axial length of core and mechanism concurrently sets up winding size determining means. The gauge may be coil insertion apparatus. Also disclosed are apparatus and methods for: adjusting winding turn size (this being related to stack height); for adjusting the 'span' of winding turns so that they may selectively be of 'odd' or 'even' span; and for selectively determining relative angular indexing of winding turn receiving means so that the polar axes of adjacent coil groups may be angularly displaced substantially any desired amount. Winding apparatus includes winding turn size determining means that are made up of a plurality of parts, at least some of which are movable relative to one another so as to provide winding turns of a desired span and size.

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Fort Wayne, IN, United States of America

Louis W Pieper