The project has focused in the first twenty months initially at an intensive customer development activity to validate many hypotheses for the new product range. The results from the intensive customer dialogs confirmed the functional requirements. To the project team surprise, the customer had very specific geometric requirement, which were not aligned with the original plans of the project. A survey conducted online with a lot of participants highlighted that key requirements are smaller size and higher accuracy.
During the project work, the new products have been demonstrated to customers to verify the hypothesis developed during customer interviews. At fairs and in many customer discussions, the new products have been received very well. At the moment the discussion is starting for first prototype deliveries of the new products to final customers.
The development work had focused on three parts:
• Scale development
• MR technology development
• Sensing head development
The scale development has made great progress. The scales with smaller pole pitches (20 µm) can be produced and the accuracy of the scale can be measured consistently. Based on the feedback of the measurement, the quality of the scale can be improved. The project team selected new visualization tools to be able to view the smaller pole pitches. New build-in measurement equipment into the coding process is now able to read the small pole pitches. There were different sensors tested for reading the scales in production, and more improvements have been implemented. Besides changing the sensor, the algorithms in the machine were updated to deal with the higher level of information. Scales with 80 µm, 40 µm and 20 µm pole pitch can now be produced.
MR technology development progressed very much as well. While the initial TRL6 prototype only achieved 40% of the expected performance, several rounds of improvement have led to achieving 75% and more of the required performance. Despite some long lasting integration problems, we have achieved the first working sensor samples that can successfully be integrated into sensing heads. The development of further improvements to achieve the targeted performance is continuing, the yield of the production is increasing.
The sensing head development progressed quickly. Besides the X-IKS15 (analog) and X-IKS9 (digital), the project team finalized the development of the new X-IKS19 with the new product architecture. Especially the new product architecture led to many new requirements for the sensing head. During this phase, an interim solution was developed, that allows for functional testing. For the final product integration, the final packaging design has to be completed, which will happen within the next two months.
Regarding the technical side, a working prototype was achieved that was working with a much smaller pole pitch than the existing magnetic encoders work with. The target was defined with 80 µm pole pitch for this product line and a sensing head that reads this scale has been achieved.
In the last months, a lot of effort has been spent on the product launch of the new product line. BOGEN decided to use the X-class name for the product. The new products X-IKS9 and X-IKS15 were introduced to the market at the official launch in 2016 . The products were also shown at several exhibitions worldwide. A lot of discussion with customers have started based on these introductions.
Overall, the project solved many challenges and found solutions for them or several solution alternatives will be tested near term. The project team is committed to deliver the project results expected.
