Rapid plastics injection moulding makes bobbins

Rapid plastics injection moulding specialist is supplying high accuracy plastics bobbins to a wind turbine manufacturer, with product quality improvements and a significant reduction in assembly time.

Proven Energy builds wind turbines is using Protomold to supply the only plastics moulded component used in its range of small scale, down-wind turbines.

Proven said it is simultaneously improving build-quality while saving assembly time and labour costs.

Based at Stewarton in Ayrshire, UK, Proven Energy was established 27 years ago and has installed over 1000 small-scale wind turbines worldwide since the business began producing turbines, in 1991.

The company's range consists of three models as follows.

* The 2.5kW unit, which is often used for powering a typical three-bedroom house in the UK.

* The 6kW turbine, which gives about three times more yield than a 2.5kW model and therefore is better suited to a larger house or to someone who wants to generate an excess of electricity for exporting to the national grid.

* The Proven 15kW, the most recent addition to the range for light industrial, light commercial and agricultural use.

A recent production initiative at Proven has been automating the winding of the generator core on the 6kW model.

Proven Energy's engineering director, Jonathan Nowill, said:"We knew that automating the winding of the generator would save bundles of labour time and bring a real quality improvement to the end product.

However, this process relies on the accurate spacing of the actual winding.

With this in mind we approached Protomold to produce the moulded part designed to do the job - a plastics bobbin that acts as an accurate spacer on the core".

Proven designed a model of the part and submitted it to Protomold for review.

Protomold responded with a few suggested modifications that would help the moulding process, in terms of the actual product design, and the material used.

Nowill said: "We had a couple of rounds of modifications and material changes, throughout which the guys at Protomold were extremely efficient and very helpful".

With 18 bobbins on each 6kW machine, the annual volumes when production commences in the coming months will be around 10,000 a year.

Once extended to Proven Energy's other models, this demand will escalate further.

"We are not quite in production yet, but so far I have been very impressed with Protomold," said Nowill.

"Not only have they reacted quickly and professionally to all of our requests, the turnaround times have been very impressive.

The nature of our business means that unfortunately we always need things in a hurry.

Protomold proved considerably faster than a conventional injection mould tool maker".

* One working day - products falling within certain size and design parameters can now be delivered in as little as one working day, said Protomould to manufacturingtalk.com.

Customers submitting part models using the Protomold Web-based quoting system, ProtoQuote, can receive detailed manufacturability analysis and an all-in production price in just hours.

Once any part modifications have been made, Protomould can deliver finished parts in a production-intent material in one business day.

Protomould's managing director, John Tumelty, said: "This is a major step forward, there is no other way of getting high-quality, precision plastics parts manufactured as quickly or for such a low price".

Tumelty added: "By providing design engineers with one business day turnaround, we're giving them the ability to better manage their product design, reduce the number of pre-production difficulties and bring products to market quicker than ever before.".

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