Electromech's machine can give significantly higher productivity.

WHEN IT comes to high technology machines for making electrical components, Indian companies usually rely on foreign vendors.

Unfortunately, these imported machines are expensive and beyond the reach of small-scale component makers.

But there is one Bangalore-based small-scale company, Electromech, founded by C. Raghunath in 1994, which has proved its match for global leaders in the field of coil winding machines. Its latest product, a CNC toroidal winding machine suited to make coils of energy meter current transformers has, won an award for innovation at the Elecrama 2002 Trade Fair in Mumbai last month.

Toroidal coils are essential components for devices like current transformers, potential transformers, power transformers, inductors etc. The process of toroidal winding calls for transfer of wire from a main spool to a circular magazine and then unwinding the wire from the magazine onto the magnetic core.

In this process several operations need to be synchronised between the core and the magazine. This is a slow process when manually done.

However, by using a CNC controller, the parameters can be numerically programmed and synchronised without human interaction and with great accuracy and repeatability. A single operator can easily look after 2 to 3 such machines.

The highest winding speed so far achieved by any such machine in the world was 2000 turns per minute (TPM).

Electromech's machine can run up to 2500 TPM, thus giving significantly higher productivity. Foreign machines use high speed steel sliders.

The Electromech machines has a plastic slider which, being lighter, exerts less centrifugal force so that the machine can achieve higher speeds.

Besides, by using a plastic slider, the wearing out of the shuttle/ magazine is reduced considerably and the insulation of the copper wire is safer than with metal sliders.

Other superior features of the Electromech winder include: Auto end feeding roller and self-expanding core drive, core dimensions and wire diameter based automatic core indexing system, intelligent turns monitoring mechanism, single and multi filar winding, banked winding, progressive winding, layer winding and spaced/ pitch winding.

There is a user-friendly menu driven software for programming such functions as wire length calculation, cascading, deceleration, layer stop and core indexing.

Electromech is now offering these machines for winding coils ranging in core size from 2.5 mm to 250 mm ID (internal diameter). The machine is priced at 1/3 cost of an equivalent imported machine and involves lower maintenance costs.