New Facility Updates
SBE Inc. has recently won a matching grant of $9.1 million as the major piece of funding for an $18 million project under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electrical Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative, part of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to expand its electric car technology manufacturing. The manufacturing facility, dedicated to the transportation market, will be located in Barre, Vermont at the Wilson Industrial Park and will have capacity to produce Power Ring capacitors for over 100,000 plug-in hybrid and electric drive vehicles within 3 years. Such capacity will complement capacity at its current facility. SBE broke ground in April 2010 and moved in to the facility in November 2010.
New Manufacturing Plant Readiness Update
June 15, 2011 by christine
SBE high-volume manufacturing facility with the capacity of building DC bus capacitors for 100,000 electric drive vehicles is now up and running. A lot has happened since the plant “ground breaking” ceremony a little more than one year ago, the move of SBE engineering team in November 2010 and the cutting of the ribbon on December 6, 2010.
Set-up of the main production line was completed in March, all machines were qualified for production and the first fully-assembled units produced on the line shipped by the end of April. Since then, more than 100 power rings have been produced while maintaining additional production capacity at the Main Street facility. The first run-at-rate production is to take place in June.
Among the state-of-the-art installation and equipment, we have a fully operational class 10,000 clean room, a key installation for the high-speed winding of capacitors, several of our 3rd generation proprietary custom-engineered winders installed and running, a proprietary clearing unit and a fully automated end spray system.
Customer qualifications are also ahead of schedule, with design wins for 4 automotive OEM EV inverter applications, commercial truck electrification and auxiliary power application, 2 hybrid bus/truck power train applications, an electric motorcycle application and a number of designs being developed for other automotive/transportation OEM EV and HEV inverter applications. Our quality control team is now actively preparing the plant for its TS-16949 certification, with a goal to achieve certification during the 1st quarter of 2012.
The 1st year milestones of this important $18 million project for SBE are now completed – on schedule.
95% of Equipment Delivered and Production Line near Full Qualification
March 4, 2011 by SBE team
To date, 95% of the new equipment for the Power Ring production line has been received and fully installed! We’re working hard on rigorous equipment and process qualification protocols. With approximately 50% having already been fully qualified, we are expecting the entire production line to be fully qualified by March 31, 2011.
There is indeed a lot of impressive automatic and semi-automatic equipment on the production floor, including:
- Ultra high technology winding machines
- Automatic taping machine
- Robotically assisted automatic end-spray system
- Computer controlled end spray scribing machine
- Section cure ovens
- Clearing machine
- Dump unit
- Capacitance testing unit
- Epoxy dispensing and curing system
- Encapsulation and curing system
- Ultrasonic cleaning system
We are looking forward to celebrating the full production line being up and running in early April! 
Video: New Manufacturing Facility Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
SBE hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, December 6th to celebrate the completion of its new high-volume manufacturing facility. Special guests included Governor Peter Shumlin, former Governor Jim Douglas, and former Lt. Governor Brian Dubie. U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu issued the following statement about SBE’s ribbon cutting: “Today’s ribbon cutting puts Barre at the forefront of green innovation in America’s automotive industry. This is another example of how Recovery Act investments are creating new clean energy jobs and revitalizing the manufacturing industry across in the U.S.”
The 52,800 square foot building, located within the Wilson Industrial Park, in Barre, Vermont, is a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. The first phase of SBE employees moved into the new facility in late November. Equipment will be 100% qualified for Power Ring Film Capacitor™ production by the end of the first quarter.