Clamping apparatus for a coil

Abstract

A clamping apparatus for a coil can exactly position a plurality of pre-assembled U-shaped wires at predetermined locations and clampingly hold their positions in a precise manner with extreme ease to thereby ensure smooth insertion of the wires into an iron core while avoiding inadvertent deformations of or damage to the wires upon assembly. A plurality of clamp pins are disposed on the support disk for rotation relative thereto and spaced from each other with predetermined circumferential intervals, each of the clamp pins being movable in a radial direction of the support disk and having a tapered tip end directed toward the central axis of the support disk. Each of the tip ends has two pairs of engagement grooves formed therein. A first drive mechanism drives the clamp pins to move in a direction radially of the support disk by a predetermined radial distance whereby the tapered tip end of each clamp pin is adapted to move into or out of adjacent ones of the U-shaped winding wires. A second drive mechanism drives the clamp pins to rotate around their longitudinal axis by a predetermined rotational angle whereby the engagement grooves in each clamp pin are adapted to engage corresponding U-shaped winding wires to fixedly clamp them.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.