Patent ID: 8341824

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a stator coil to be wound in and around a stator by bending an insulating-coating conducting wire having a longitudinal direction along which the wire extends linearly, wherein the insulating-coating conducting wire is bent so as to alternately have slot-held conductor sections to be held in slots of the stator and coil-end conductor sections each mutually connecting two of the slot-held conductor sections outside the slots, the stator having a circumferential direction along which the coil-end conductor sections are deployed and an axial direction along which the slots extend, the method comprising: arranging three or more pairs of molds along the insulating-coating conducting wire in the longitudinal direction at predetermined intervals such that the three or more pairs of molds are located along a portion of the insulating-coating conducting wire, the portion of the insulating-coating conducting wire being placed linearly and serving as a wire section which is to be formed into each of the coil-end conductor sections, each pair of molds having paired molds facing with each other with the portion of the insulating-coating conducting wire located between the paired molds; first forming the coil-end conductor sections by moving the mold pairs of the three or more pairs of molds such that the paired molds come closer to each other; and second forming the slot-held conductor sections by moving the three or more pairs of molds, in parallel, in both the longitudinal direction along which the portion of the insulating-coating conducting wire extends and a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction, wherein the arranging step arranges the three or more pairs of molds including a pair of molds selected from a plurality of pairs of molds respectively having different widths in the longitudinal direction, the different widths allowing the coil-end conductor section to have a changed width in a circumferential direction of the stator.