HV Wooding employs Radan
in support of growing
electric vehicle demand
A company specialising in renewable energy is seeing
major changes in the components it is being asked to
produce for electric vehicles.
HV Wooding works at the high end of the electric
vehicle market, manufacturing parts for two technologies
in the powertrain, taking in the battery and motors.
Customers include companies across the spectrum of
electric vehicles – Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers of big-name
car marques; supercar manufacturers; supercar e-racing;
electric motorbike GP racing throughout Europe; railways;
aerospace; and, increasingly, electric buses,
construction and agricultural vehicles.
For the battery, the Kent-based company makes a
wide range of customer-speci ed busbars, forming part
of the electrical connection, along with modular busbars
that connect the battery to the rest of the vehicle’s
con guration.
The other key area for the rm is around the electric
motor itself, producing specialist products, both for the
drivetrain and in-wheel. While most of their parts, both
for busbars and motor laminations, are cut from sheet
material on a Trumpf ( www.is.gd/tuxuwa ) laser CNC
machine tool, programmed with Radan CADCAM software
from Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
( www.is.gd/fenopu ), HV Wooding also uses wire erosion,
mainly for prototyping and developing small series
production.
Sales director Paul Allen says Radan is also used as
part of the process of quoting for jobs.
“For example, most busbars are made
from copper or aluminium, so we’d input
the relevant material, such as 4 mm
copper, and lay the proposed parts out
in a Radan nest. This calculates
accurate material usage and prices, so
we present to the customer the most
commercial and cost-effective solution.
Then, when we’re ready to go into
production, we’ve got a nished nest already in a le.”
He says that as every busbar is different, Radan is
vital for nesting a wide variety of shapes and sizes of the
same thickness. “If we were to do all this manually, the
quotation process would take much longer and may not
be accurate. And we’d need to carry out a lot of manual
work prior to manufacturing to get the best material
usage. So Radan speeds up both our quotation and
manufacturing processes.” Radan’s Radbend is used to
calculate bend angles and the order of bends for forming
the busbars into a variety of con gurations, too.
Radan also plays a major role in manufacturing motor
laminations – several thin pieces or sheets of electrical
steel or cobalt iron cut on the laser and bonded together
to form the ‘Core Pack’. “It’s vital that these parts are of
high precision. The busbars and laminations are all
required to be cut to tight dimensional tolerances,
sometimes down to 50 microns for laminations.”
Higher end electric motors increasingly need thinner
electrical steel, meaning the amount of adhesive applied
becomes more signi cant, with as much metal as
possible in the motor, and not so much adhesive.
HV Wooding has identi ed gaps in that market and is
now actively seeking ways of making a breakthrough to
provide a specialist solution to that issue. To this end,
the company is working to develop a process for
accurately applying a bonding agent to the electrical
steel. Some types of material are available pre-coated
with adhesive, but not the very thin grades in low volume
and cobalt iron, which are becoming more prevalent.
“So we’re working closely with a university and industry
on a bonding process that will enable us to get motors
designed, produce and test a prototype using Radan,
and get them to market much quicker.”
Many of HV Wooding’s customers are working on
projects involving battery technology, looking at battery
life to improve vehicle distance on one charge, says
Allen. “A lot of new designs using different grades of
copper and aluminium are coming through to us and
they’re also looking closely at the insulation of the
busbars.” He explains that the change is being driven by
the need to gain more power from the motors,
so electrical steels are becoming increasingly more
important for motor performance.
In conclusion, he says: “HV Wooding has been
established for 50 years, diversifying from traditional
switchgear through renewable to data centres and now
to electric vehicles and drivetrains. As a result, we now
need different technologies and processes to take full
advantage of the new opportunities
relating to our core activity, particularly
around assemblies. Radan is a key part
of the processes we have in place to
make a one-off component, right up to
high volume production.”
Inset left:
Lamination
designs are
becoming more
demanding
Below: Busbar’s
manufactured by
HV Wooding
www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets | November 2020 31
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