A cable feeder tool for robotized cable winding

Cable winding is an alternative technology to create stator windings in large electrical machines. Today such cable winding is performed manually, which is very repetitive, time-consuming and therefore also expensive. This paper presents the design, function and control system of a developed cable feeder tool for robotized stator cable winding. The presented tool was able to catch a cable inside a cable guiding system and to grab the cable between two wheels. One of these wheels was used to feed cable through the feeder. A control system was integrated in the tool to detect feeding slippage and to supervise the feeding force on the cable. Functions to calculate the cable feed length, to release the cable from the tool and for positional calibration of the stator to be wound were also integrated in the tool. In validating the function of the cable feeder tool, the stator of the linear generator used in the Wave Energy Converter generator developed at Uppsala University was used as an example. Through these experiments, it was shown that the developed robot tool design could be used to achieve automated robotized cable winding. These results also complied with the cycle time assumptions for automated cable winding from earlier research. Hence, it was theoretically indicated that the total winding cycle time for one Uppsala University Wave Energy Converter stator could be reduced from about 80 h for manual winding with four personnel to less than 20 h in a fully developed cable winding robot cell. The same robot tool and winding automation could also be used, with minor adjustments, for other stator designs.