When winding of a stator is done by the process of inserting coils, extended ends of pre-winded coils stay not inserted in the slots of stator package, thus creating wire bundles. In further steps of serial production wire bundles need to be formed around the winding head and collected in pre-defined collection points in order to be connected together to form phase outputs and star-points. In an existing production line, it is noticed that the manual forming of wire bundles is one of the line’s bottlenecks. For that reason, there is a wish to automate the wire bundle forming process. According to combined systems engineering and engineering design approach, through the analysis of the given problem, wire bundle forming system is decomposed into several subsystems that can be developed separately. Hereby, the focus of the work is set to planar forming of the curved part of a bundle and implicit requirements of the system are detected. As a first step of a solution search, an overview of existing solutions to similar problems of wire, pipe and sheet metal bending is given. In addition, theoretical information about mechanical properties of enamelled copper wire and springback are provided. To build a concept for planar forming of wire bundles, a bottom-up approach is chosen. Deforming of wire bundle is identified as a core function, therefore it is investigated through systematic solution search as well as experimental validation. In the next step, the most appropriate forming methods are extended with additional functions considering gripping the bundle and handling the bundle until the collection point is reached. Alternative solutions are then combined and nine concepts for planar forming procedure are developed. After concept evaluation, as the last step, technical realisation of the highest rated concept is further developed more into a detail. In the end, next steps are explained that are required in order to prepare the given solution for implementation in the production line.
