9:00-16:00 | 12th of February 2020
Transformers, small or big play a critical role in the electricity market on a daily basis. The scaling of voltage and current from a lower to higher value or vice-versa is what plays a major role in reducing line losses. A very big manufacturing company in this sector is the Royal SMIT Transformers which is one of the leading manufacturers of medium sized transformers worldwide.
Founded in 1913, the company has clients all over the world. The easy access to ports in Nijmegen where it is situated gives it a competitive edge in exporting large sized transformers and hence have a larger scope in experimenting new designs.
On February 12th, 2020 SSD along with DSD Waldur (the power engineering dispuut of TU Eindhoven) was invited to visit the factory of Royal SMIT Transformers at Nijmegen. All it took was a ninety minutes’ drive from Delft to Nijmegen to get started with the excursion. Our group consisted of eleven students from Delft and Eindhoven who were all looking forward to this.
The excursion to Royal SMIT Transformers had a lot of activities. A brief talk about the company was followed up with some very interesting research done by the company. This was followed by lunch and then the much awaited “guided” factory tour. The factory tour gave us an insight into each, and every step involved in manufacturing a transformer. From the laminating of the layered steel transformer cores to the winding of the paper-wrapped copper conductors around wooden frames, no assembly step was left to our imagination . The distinct task division which enables the overall process to become efficient was very evident. This was followed by a small talk about the testing of transformers once the manufacturing and assembling is done.
The whole day was very exciting and being able to watch the actual transformers being built in many different stages was informative. The employees were kind enough to answer our queries taking time off their schedule.
SSD is thankful to Royal SMIT Transformers for organising a fun as well as an intuitive excursion.
