Conductor insulation technology has evolved throughout the electrical age in response to ever-changing and increasing demands and requirements. Thus, many new compositions, processes, and structures have been devised and the art has reached an advanced state of development. There are, nevertheless, some significant persisting problems, one of which concerns the insulation of series loops at the ends of the stators of large, fluid-cooled, electric generators. At present, and for a very long time, these elements have been insulated and thereby electrically isolated from each other by manual taping and patching procedures. The difficulty of this in-place method, however, has increased with the evolving of liquid-cooled generator designs and the diminishing space between loops. The improvement of this invention increases insulation resistance to hi-pot (i.e., high electric potential) failures during the various manufacturing phases of production of these machines and eliminates costly shipping delays and repairing procedures. Independently of such possible failures, however, this invention minimizes significant penalties in the form of labor cost resulting from poor accessibility of parts which must be securely and assuredly insulated in the initial installation.
General recognition of this problem by those skilled in the art has resulted in a variety of attempts at solutions along tapeless practice lines. The well-known liquid system methods of potting and casting have been proposed and attempted without satisfactory results, particularly as applied to the commercial production of large generating apparatus. Major shortcomings of those approaches include the necessity for designing the potting compound with "self leveling" characteristics, frequent mixing equipment breakdowns, uncontrollable resin fill leaks, expensive potting cases, and general incompatability with established manufacturing practices.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds