December 2019

NEW EQUIPMENT

CTD is happy to announce that we have introduced the first collaborative robot on our production line. It is situated on our GA (general assembly) line for use during the final test procedures. The cobot will be a new tool to improve and guarantee our high quality standards. Cobots, or collaborative robots, are light weight, plug and play robots intended to collaborate with humans in a shared space or to work safely in close proximity, alongside people.
Our Cobot is equipped with a vision system: it will be capable of taking picture and execute very simple visual checks, like motor size or motor length. The pictures will be stored into CTD’s databases and will be available if customer requires. Our customers are showing a very positive feed back regarding the news: the cobot offers a strong feeling of security and quality control. Customers are happy to know that CTD will store every picture of sensitive motor’s details.
We need to work smarter and invent new ways of doing things. Smart people use smart tools to do their work more efficiently, smart cobots are just another tool to help us achieve more, improve working conditions, while insuring safety in the work place.
For the next weeks the cobot will need to be trained, and our GA team will use the cobot during firewall quality check and we are continually working to make it as easy and intuitive as possible.

This month we also received our new injection moulding machine. This new injection moulding (IM) machine is an essential tool in the assembly process of our new high speed
rotor: it is used to in-fill the small ridges between the rotor magnets with a plastic web in
preparation for the carbon fibre banding process.
In an uncured state, carbon fibre is a delicate material; by filling in the ridges and creating a
smooth surface, the fibre strands are not exposed to concentrated areas of stress, reducing the chances of tearing under tension they are wrapped around the rotor. Introducing the IM machine to our assembly line has also presented other opportunities to make new parts in-house.
Whereas conventional IM tooling is relatively expensive, we can create custom mould inserts using additive technology (3D printing) in our Digital Manufacturing Centre at minimal expense to produce small parts with low production runs. For example, we have recently been experimenting with producing new components to install in large hybrid boxes.

NEW CTD STRUCTURE

To further increase the growth rate for CTD and Nidec, the company has been restructured to optimise the ability for CTD to respond and work with customers on new solutions. To achieve a quicker and more focussed response to large customers, solutions teams have been created. The solutions teams will have direct contact with the engineering teams at the customer and will take responsibility from concept discussions through to delivery of sample products. Then working with the operations team the solutions manager will work with the manufacturing engineering team to take the designs through to production.

Click here to view the new solutions team structure, it highlights the people in each team and how the roles link to other functions within CTD.

Click here to view the new full CTD organogram and reporting structure to support the accelerated sales growth.