WCA September 2023

Industry news

Design award for flexible nutrunner Atlas Copco has been awarded a Red Dot Design Award for the design of a handheld nutrunner – the ITB-P tensor battery smart pistol tool, used in the assembly of electric vehicles and aircraft. Red Dot Award-winning products need to be aesthetically appealing, functional, smart or innovative and display outstanding design. The Red Dot jury stated that the ITB-P “successfully integrates aesthetic aspects into a tool that is excellently geared to practical requirements.” Atlas Copco’s Henrik Elmin – business area president, industrial technique division, commented, “I am very proud that we have once again been awarded this distinguished design recognition. I would like to thank the entire project, product and R&D team who made this possible. They continue to push the technological limits, whilst managing to keep in mind the operators who will be using our tools around the world.” The ITB-P was developed and designed for manufacturers of electric vehicles and aircraft needing a nutrunner for their most challenging applications, such as during the assembly of car doors or aircraft structures, when there is a need for high accuracy, traceability and optimum ergonomics to secure a critical joint. The cordless and lightweight ITB-P is fast, flexible and accurate, and packaged in an operator-friendly design.

Atlas Copco’s ITB-P tool

“This award is an acknowledgment of our commitment to always providing the best possible solutions for our customers through combining design, technology and function in our tools for industrial manufacturing,” said Mr Elmin. Atlas Copco AB www.atlascopcogroup.com

“Haute couture” springs for the fashion industry Haute couture is the pinnacle of fashion, developing high-end custom designs – not an industry usually associated with springs. However, Lesjöfors has created its own “haute couture” spring for a global fashion brand. “Since we already had a good relationship with Lesjöfors Industrifjädrar, we turned to the Herrljunga unit with the challenging request.”

compression spring in the requested dimension. The project proved our operators’ and technical salespeople’s deep competence and ability to think outside the box.” Multiple volumes of the new spring have been ordered and the fashion industry now features springs as part of its logistics management. Mr Ignell concluded, “We have continuous deliveries of the trolleys to the customer and we also provide the model to other customers in this seg ment. We will definitely turn to Lesjöfors again when we need spring expertise.” Lesjöfors AB www.lesjoforsab.com

Upon assessing the drawings, the technicians believed that the com- pression spring requirements were too large for the facility’s machines, and considered migrating the project to another of the Lesjöfors Group’s 55+ manufacturing sites (overall, the group can coil wire from 0.3 to 65mm diameter). However, a determination to keep the project local, to deepen the relationship between the key sub-contractor site and its customer, saw the technicians expand the parameters of the wire coiling facilities. Christian Olsson, technical manager at Lesjöfors Industrifjädrar, commented, “Thanks to a deep knowledge of the capacity level of our manufacturing machines and a strong design foun- dation by our designers, we were able to stretch our machines’ boundaries to find a new way to manufacture the

In a development project for Swedish truck and trolley manufacturer Helge Nyberg, Lesjöfors Industrifjädrar in Herrljunga, Sweden, pushed the bounda ries of its coiling wire diameters for the design of a step trolley with a “springy shelf”. Having supplied stock springs for Helge Nyberg’s standard-range products, the Herrljunga-based manufacturing site of the Lesjöfors Group has been a supplier of lifetime-guaranteed springs for decades. The requirements of the fashion house demanded a new level of bespoke component supply for the newly commissioned and customised trolley. Helge Nyberg’s R&D manager, Patrik Ignell, explained, “Our customer required a trolley with a loading shelf that automatically lowered when loading.

Lesjöfors springs are used to lower the trolley’s loading shelf

Graphics bigstockphoto.com/Artist tereh

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September 2023