Opinion ID: 1924519
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the products

Text: ECC, a Minnesota corporation, manufactures D.C. iron core motors, moving coil motors, brushless motors, and other products. ECC has four plants, three of which manufacture motors and motor parts. The total employment of those three plants is around 500. CMI is a Minnesota corporation which manufactures moving coil motors. John Mahoney is the president and founder of CMI. Mahoney was formerly national sales manager for ECC. While at ECC, Mahoney established ECC's customer relationships with Storage Technology Company and IBM, customers for the motors involved in this lawsuit. ECC and CMI manufacture high performance D.C. motors, called servo motors, which are able to start and stop at least 30 times per second. These motors are useful for such high technology applications as computer disc drives and printers and industrial robots. In this action ECC claims misappropriation of trade secrets with respect to one moving coil motor and one brushless motor. Moving coil motors, also known in some forms as shell-type armature motors or basket armature motors, represent a major development in high performance motors. In traditional D.C. motors, the rotor (moving component) consists of an iron core with wire wrapped around it in coils; the stator (stationary component) consists of permanent magnets, which create a magnetic field through the coils, causing motion when current is passed through the coils. In a moving coil D.C. motor, the coils of wire are not wrapped around a core to form the armature or rotor; the coils themselves form the armature. The wire coils are formed into a cylindrical basket which is made rigid by a combination of adhesives and other materials such as fiberglass. Since the moving part of the motor is a hollow shell, the inertia of the motor is reduced while the torque remains high. The motor may thus start and stop quickly without fighting as much inertia as is present in the iron core motors. Working moving coil motors have been produced for many years. However, the early motors were low performance motors because of problems in making the coil structure rigid. These problems have been solved today because of developments in adhesives. Iron core motors and moving coil motors, described above, use brushes and commutators to transmit current to the proper coils in the rotating armature. As the armature turns, different segments of the commutator (connected to different coils) come into contact with the stationary brush; thus, different coils receive current. These brush-type motors have two major disadvantages. First, these motors involve sliding contact between the brushes and the commutator; therefore, parts tend to wear out quickly, and some arcing occurs in the commutators, causing interference. Second, heat buildup is a problem in moving coil motors. The wires, which heat up as current is passed through them, are on the inside and surrounded by magnets, which trap the heat. Thus, moving coil motors must have a complex cooling system to draw away the heat. Brushless motors solve these two problems by having the wire coils stationary on the outside, with the magnets mounted on the rotor. Thus, the heat can easily be drawn away from the coils on the outside. Furthermore, the coils do not move, so brushes are not required to transmit current, and no sliding contact exists to cause breakdowns. The brushless motor contains a sensing device to activate the proper coils to cause rotation. Brushless motors were developed more than 20 years ago for military and aerospace projects, but these were very expensive. Until six or seven years ago, the only commercial brushless motors were low performance models. According to Mr. Edward Kelen, president of ECC, ECC was one of only three significant producers of small moving coil motors in 1980. Also, although seven companies produced brushless servo motors, ECC had more than half of the private sector domestic market. Motors made for the producer's own use and motors produced for military or foreign markets were not included in Kelen's evaluations, but it seems clear that ECC's share of the overall servo motor market is substantial. Moreover, Kelen testified that the total brushless motor market is growing rapidly; in five years (from 1980) it was projected to grow from two million dollars to fifty or sixty million dollars per year. ECC began work on moving coil motors in 1966. At this time Honeywell had already applied for a patent on a moving coil motor. ECC began making primitive moving coil motors in 1967; ECC developed its 1030/1040 motor to meet the needs of users of a comparable Honeywell motor, the 33 V.M. The two motors are nearly identical, and Designer Erland Persson had a 33 Honeywell V.M. in his possession when he designed ECC's 1030/1040. Persson testified that he had problems with the adhesives and supporting materials for the 1030/1040 and that it took ECC from six to eight months to develop the armature for the motor. About 1974, Robert Schept, Engineering Manager at ECC, designed the successful ECC 1600 moving coil motor. Schept studied various other motors on the market to try to determine the best combination of dimensions for the motor. Subsequently, Schept designed the 1125 moving coil motor for ECC. He did this by scaling down the ECC 1600 while keeping its performance basically the same. Schept testified that it took four to five months to design prototypes for the 1125 and around a year to start actual production. The 1125 is now used for a variety of applications; for each application ECC produces a different model 1125 with different dimensions. The model involved in this case is the XXXX-XX-XXX, designed for a specific computer system built by Storage Technology Co. ECC's brushless motors are of more recent origin than that of ECC's moving coil motors. Nonetheless, a long process of trial and error, using new developments in technology and costing approximately two million dollars, has been involved in the development of workable models. ECC initially sent prototypes to several customers. Finally ECC worked with IBM to develop a prototype motor for an IBM printer. This model was a very successful enterprise for ECC, since ECC became the only known source of motors for the IBM project. For around five years, ECC has also been working with Ford Motor Company on a new application for ECC brushless motors. This application involves using larger ECC motors in automated assembly lines. ECC has produced several prototypes for Ford and hopes to begin production in 1983.