Tools and Technology for Slip Ring demand
Posted on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 @ 09:51 AM
Taking in the Big Show
As September rolled around, plans had been set to attend the semi-annual International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago’s McCormick Center. The UEA attendees were Joe Avery, Al Schaefer and myself (Kent Davis). This event is a critical step in keeping our production facility equipped with the necessary machine tools and up to date technology to compete in the Slip Ring market, and keep up with the increasing demand. By seeing the new offerings from the vendors at IMTS and spending time visiting with the representatives we can gather a wide variety of information and ideas that can be used to further improve our processes and add new capabilities. It was obvious after a short time of walking the isles that the wind energy sector had played a very large part in influencing what the machine tool suppliers are building and displaying. There were a large percentage of machines built to the incredible scale necessary to produce the massive parts used on the multi-megawatt turbines that are popping up across the country, and around the world. It was very interesting to see some of our wind energy customer’s components being displayed on these machines and know that we also are playing a part in this growing industry with the slip-rings we supply for these turbines.
-Kent Davis
Hub casting for a 2.5 megawatt turbine