Many hundreds of designs have been developed for practical, industrial, commercial and leisure use and over 11,000 LIMs and speed controllers have now been built. Equipment has been supplied to the UK, most European countries, South Africa, Australia, Japan and especially the USA.

Force Engineering concentrates on the design and manufacture of linear induction motors and other special electromagnetic machines. Many projects remain confidential, but R&D work has been carried out for the UK government, Disney in California, Reynolds Metals, Black Clawson Kennedy, and Wyle Laboratories whilst both Raytheon and Stone & Webster have used Force as LIM consultants for transport systems.

In 1991 Force supplied 130 LIMs for Euro Disney and in 1993 supplied over 500 LIMs for the Senate People Mover in Washington DC. Early in 1995 Force was chosen to supply LIMs to Vanderlande Industries for an airport baggage handling system at Oslo. Subsequently, Force was chosen for a different baggage handling system at Heathrow by BAE Automated Systems Inc. More baggage handling and parcel sorting systems for other users are now in the pipeline.

In 1996 a major innovation in the leisure industry was the first successful application of LIMs in a catapult launch system for 2 roller coasters in USA. This has since been followed by 7 more systems in USA and 1 in Japan. 7 to 9 tonne cars are accelerated to 70 mph in less than 4 seconds. Force both prefers and expects to be involved with each customer from beginning to end of product design. After sales support is also very important in this specialised product area.

Force's design facilities include expert staff with over 80 man years design experience. Bespoke LIM software has been written which is used to determine optimum design for each particular application. A close relationship is maintained with UK Universities taking advantage of their research activities and specialist knowledge and software.

Almost all manufacturing, requiring some specially developed techniques, is carried out in-house. Test facilities include purpose built equipment and the most modern instrumentation.

Forcepack LIMs produce thrusts from just a few Newtons to many kiloNewtons, with inputs from 0.5 amps at 100v single phase to hundreds of amps at 480v 3 phase. Sizes vary from a few square inches to many square feet; from a few VA to an experimental unit of 3.5MVA.

Standard mechanical protection is provided by epoxy resin encapsulation whilst additional protection may use stainless steel covers, hermetic sealing of motors in stainless enclosures, or even embedding motors in iron castings. Cooling can be provided by free air convection, by forced air or open/closed loop water cooling.

Force is continually expanding both the product range and the list of satisfied customers. Special purpose machines and control systems are constantly being developed for individual customer application. Manufacturing techniques are always under review whilst test and inspection equipment is similarly updated.

GO WITH EXPERIENCE, GO WITH FORCE