Brushless, small and more efficient: this is the evolution of the electric motor in the household, too.
Established in 1993, headquartered at Barberino Val d’Elsa (Florence) and today part of IMA AUTOMATION hub, ATOP is one of the protagonists in the manufacturing of innovative machines and automated lines for the production of stators and rotors for electric motors used in manifold sectors. «Among our reference markets, for over 50 years the household has represented one of the most successful markets», states Paolo Bovo, Technical Sales Director, IMA AUTOMATION ATOP.
The sector is characterized by an unceasing evolution with transition of universal motors – the so-called commutator motors – towards Brushless motors; since the early 2000s, ATOP has created and developed new solutions and new technologies for the winding of the main motor types, supplying the following solutions:
1) flyer winding;
2) needle winding;
3) single-pole winding;
4) insertion winding.
«In the brushless world, these technologies are constantly subjected to review, updating and upgrading. Innovation is carried out by IMA AUTOMATION ATOP, satisfying customers’ primary requirements, that is to say having smaller and smaller motors from the dimensional point of view, with increasingly low powers but higher yields and efficiencies. These demands are in conformity with the household market’s will and need of being increasingly “green”. Today, what matters is no longer the motor power in itself but the higher efficiency than in the past. This also shares in decreasing the product’s costs: a less powerful smaller motor contains less material and fewer components». To hit these targets, special machines able to perform valuable processes are necessary. «This is particularly important for high-end products that IMA AUTOMATION ATOP mainly addresses today, no matter whether the sector of white goods, of compressors or of water pumps are at stake, all areas where the development of brushless motors is particularly lively».
In recent years we have witnessed an evolution also regarding the motor manufacturing logistics: «A trend change that concerns manufacturing sites has taken place, with a displacement from Asia towards Europe and a balancing of the global production. The last three years, in particular, have certainly marked out a new direction, a new course where all tend to be more independent in terms of continent and production sites», Bovo ends.
