STI
Our strategic partnership with HTS wire manufacturer Superconductor Technologies Inc. is proving beneficial for both sides as the HTS market matures.
Superconductor Technologies Inc. (STI) are a global leader in high temperature superconducting (HTS) wire manufacture. The company is close nit team based in Austin Texas that have patented methods which allow them to fine tune the performance of their wire to suit a variety of applications. With a relatively small Engineering and Science team, most effort is focused on perfecting production and process repeatability. This has made STI the global supplier of choice for several HTS applications.
STI’s wire manufacturing process was developed from the ground up, and their in-depth understanding of the product development cycle motivates them to insure that process developed today can be scaled up to meet tomorrow’s market demands. This makes STI an incredible production-scale test bed for new ideas and an invaluable resource for our world leading HTS machine development projects. On our side, we offer STI scientific capacity that would not be viable for them in-house.
Projects
HTS wire characterisation
Currently we are working with STI on wire performance characterization. Robinson specialises in two performance characterization capabilities: critical current measurement and direct measurement of delamination toughness. Our critical current measurement system was designed and built in house and is the only commercially-available characterisation system specifically designed to test superconducting wires under the magnetic field, field angle and temperature ranges relevant to industry. The rigorous quality controls we carry out for STI mean they can incorporate their wire into commercial products with confidence that it will perform as required in applications.
Student exchange
The delamination toughness measurement techniques used at STI were developed by a Robinson Student, Ratu Mataira, on a 6-month exchange to their team in Texas in 2016. This work represents a major step forward in our understanding of this characteristic.