Electric motors have been used in industry for more than 150 years. Siemens AG has been making them at its plant in Bad Neustadt, Germany, for 80 of those years. Most of these motors have been installed in pumps, fans, compressors, production machines, machine tools, rolling mills and ships. Increasingly, however, the motors are used in robots.
How appropriate, then, that assemblers at Bad Neustadt now work collaboratively with an LBR iiwa robot (made by KUKA Robotics Corp.) to build stators for the motors. The stator consists of a punched magnetic steel sheet body and an aluminum bearing plate. During motor operation, energy flows through the stator (which is stationary) to or from the motor’s rotary system.