General Electric Company
Method of manufacturing an electric machine with a conformal stator coating

Abstract:

A method of manufacturing an electric machine includes conformally coating a portion of a stator assembly of the electric machine via an electrophoretic process using a coating slurry. The coating slurry includes a polymer precursor loaded with thermally conductive ceramic materials. The method includes curing the polymer precursor of the coated slurry to secure the thermally conductive ceramic materials within a polymer matrix to form a conformal coating on the portion of the stator assembly. The method also includes loading the stator coils into slots of the stator core to form the stator assembly, wherein the conformal coating electrically insolates the stator coils from the stator core of the stator assembly, and wherein an effective amount of thermally conductive ceramic materials, above a percolation threshold, are present in the conformal coating to form continuous thermal pathways across a thickness of the conformal coating.