With more than 100 years of accumulation empowering China's modernization, ABB has built the power industry on the basis of small installation products

ABB recently launched the SoliMold medium-voltage cable accessories product series, which can be used in places with a working voltage of 1-35kV, with an electrical withstand voltage performance 30% higher than the national standard, and the installation time is greatly shortened compared with traditional products.

At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Edison, the inventor at the time, was promoting his lighting system, and the low-voltage cables for power supply were laid on the ground, pedestrians trampled, horse-drawn carriages were crushed, and the connection points of cables and light bulbs became extremely vulnerable to damage. Thomas and Betts, two young Princeton graduates, saw this phenomenon and subsequently invented the world's first cable protection device, which led to the creation of Thomas &Betts (now part of ABB).

"A great company is born with small but important discoveries, just as installation aids are essential for both electrical equipment and large power systems. Electrical installation products truly embody how to ensure the high quality of power projects from the smallest points on a small basis, achieve a great power industry, and help the grand goal of Chinese modernization. Dr. Dong Gang, head of installation products at ABB Electric China, said.

Heaven to earth

"High-quality" installations that empower a wide range of industries

In 2012, ABB completed the acquisition of Tongbei Company, and has become a global leader in the design, manufacture and sale of installation products for industrial, construction and power industries, with 38 high-quality sub-brands so far, covering more than 200,000 products including cable ties, ports and connectors, bracket conduits and medium-voltage cable assemblies.

"The installation of products basically belongs to where the electricity goes, it must cooperate with the electricity to go, and ABB installation products are widely used in various electricity occasions around the world." Dong Gang said proudly.

From an application perspective, ABB's installed products can be broadly divided into three categories: electrical management, connection and protection. ABB is the global inventor of cable ties in electrical management applications, and the standard Ty-Rap cable tie was patented in 1958 and was originally developed for bundling aircraft wiring, and the tensile strength, durability, low cost and ease of installation of cable ties are revolutionary inventions for the wiring industry. Since its inception, ABB has produced more than 30 billion cable ties, which are enough to travel between the Earth and the Moon more than a dozen times if they are connected end to end.

With more than 250 types and materials to choose from, ABB Ty-Rap cable ties have proven their performance in a wide temperature range and a wide range of applications, whether they are 500 feet below sea level, 35,000 feet in the air, more than 300 kilometers per hour in trains, and indoor or outdoor commercial and domestic scenes.

ABB Ty-Rap cable ties can also withstand the corrosion and radiation resistance requirements of space flight, so NASA chose to use them extensively in commercial applications around the world, such as securing the internal and external ducts and components of the Perseverance rover to ensure the safety of research and laboratory equipment.

NASA's Perseverance rover with ABB Ty-Rap™ cable ties

When it comes to electrical connection and protection, ABB provides reliable and diverse solutions to meet the needs of different customers, helping to establish a safe and convenient power environment for each industrial site. According to Dong Gang, during the epidemic, ABB's cable components ensured part of the power supply system of a shelter hospital in Shandong, helping it to quickly build and put into use. There are also a range of electrical accessories such as ABB AFX harness conduit and Narrow Tongue crimp end electrical auxiliary materials that can be used in special equipment used in harsh environments, such as power generation, robotics, food processing, refining, sewage treatment, rail locomotives, infrastructure, offshore drilling platforms, mining, wind power, solar power generation, off-road vehicles, etc.

ABB's SoliMold medium-voltage cable accessories range also play a role in the power supply system of the mobile hospital

It's about overall cost, it's about safety

High standards ensure the reliability and quality of installed products

Looking forward to the modern industrial system and future industrial model such as manufacturing power and quality power proposed by Chinese-style modernization, the nine-story platform puts forward a huge demand for the high quality and high reliability of the underlying foundation and protection products, including all kinds of installation accessories.

"Although there are no particularly complete standards or regulations for accessories in China, ABB has always advocated that electrical protection and control should adhere to higher product standards to ensure the safe use of electricity throughout the life cycle of the entire system." Dong Gang continued: "In the final analysis, the high performance of the product is reflected in the higher safety and reliability of the client, and the ABB installation products can leave sufficient safety redundancy in any harsh environment or working process to ensure the absolute safety of electricity, and the product itself also has excellent resistance and aging resistance." "

Ensuring the safety and reliability of installed products is not a one-time thing, but the first priority of ABB's more than 100 years of R&D and technological innovation. Today, ABB's wide range of installation products has its own "safety secrets".

For example, in order to make a seemingly inconspicuous cable tie work in a variety of extreme environments, even if it is deployed in a wind power station at minus 40 degrees Celsius, it still provides normal performance without brittleness, not only requires ABB cable ties to be carefully matched in the selection of materials, but also benefits from maintaining full inspection during the manufacturing process, and even selecting 1-2 cavity cable ties for destructive testing to ensure their reliability.

"If the product can not be found in the production and quality inspection process of failure or defect, it is equivalent to the manufacturer should bear the manufacturing cost to the user, and the manufacturer only needs to use 5 cents to improve each defect found, then the user after deployment to find defects need to use more than 100 times the cost to repair and replace." Dong Gang used a set of price comparisons to vividly express why the cost value of installation products must ensure safety and reliability.

For lightning protection and grounding applications, ABB provides lightning protection and grounding systems and surge protection system solutions that can fully protect the safe, reliable and long-lasting operation of building power supply and distribution equipment.

For example, the raw materials of ABB terminal and cold-pressed connector products use T1 copper as raw material, with a copper content of 99.99%, and the surface of the terminal adopts tinning process, with a coating thickness of 7μm, which provides better corrosion resistance for the termination. At the same time, the product has passed the test standards of IEC60352 and IEC61238-1-Class B to meet the CE certification, and the relevant test standards will also do more stringent tests in terms of the temperature rise of the end energized and the pull-out force requirements after crimping. In addition, ABB uses color marks on the end products and uses the color mark on the crimping die to standardize the crimping from a process point of view, so as to avoid the installer using the wrong tool, resulting in the end not reaching the rated pulling force.

With more than 100 years of accumulation empowering China's modernization, ABB has built the power industry on the basis of small installation products

ABB's crimp and mechanical connectors embody multi-dimensional process standardization and reliability assurance

To meet the basic requirements of magnet wire connections, ABB offers insulation-piercing Dragon Tooth® crimp terminations that require no soldering, no need to remove insulation, no special handling skills, and can be installed in seconds using the headers and matching tools – these tins are made of copper alloy, tinned, and have many tines on the inner surface, and when crimping the end to the insulated magnet wire, the sharp and hard tines penetrate the insulation and oxide and bite into the wire. A reliable, low-resistance connection is established through high pressure at the tip and edge of the tines and the sliding between the tines and the wire.

"In ABB's view, the reliability of the product also needs to be reflected in the integrated system, because the connector and the cable are crimped as a system, and the connection point should not become a weak point on the cable, but should be a point with connection reliability in the whole system." Dong Gang further explained: "Even if the quality of the cable is uneven, after crimping with ABB products and tools, the mechanical strength of the connection point should be at least no worse than the cable itself, the conductivity should be better than that of the cable, and the temperature rise should not be greater than any point of the cable." "

Links to global resources

Deepen local innovation and portfolio strengths

China is still recognized as one of the world's fast-growing, multi-opportunity, diversified and complex markets, and installation products, as one of the important business units of ABB Electric, not only need to introduce high-quality products into the Chinese market, but also make Chinese customers aware of the importance of installation accessories products for the entire electrical system and industry chain. Dong Gang said that as a new entrant in the Chinese market, ABB's installation products are rooted in localized innovation and are also ABB's consistent product development strategy, and through these years of efforts, ABB has launched very "grounded" products such as seismic brackets and lightning protection and grounding system materials for the Chinese market, which have been recognized by customers.

China's urbanization is accelerating due to rapid economic development, and the height and scale of modern buildings are constantly setting new records, and these magnificent buildings are placing higher demands on the seismic performance of non-structural components of the project. Based on load mechanics and seismic action verification as the core, ABB Superstrut® bracket products equipped with high-efficiency connectors, as well as tailor-made, stable and economical disaster protection solutions, build a safe and convenient earthquake-resistant "fortress" for mechanical and electrical facilities such as pipelines, air ducts, cable trays, etc., and maintain the original working state no matter how the building does not collapse, which is also the content to be mandatory in the new national standard.

ABB Superstrut brackets are widely used to build safe and convenient earthquake-resistant "fortresses"

Since the third-party test report is an important basis for measuring the performance of the stent product, ABB bracket products pay attention to the reducibility of the parameter performance in the test report on the site, so in the design and manufacturing process, it insists on using high-quality steel from large steel mills, eliminating the use of negative tolerance materials, and ensuring that the laboratory performance is restored to the construction site. It is worth mentioning that ABB's quick lock products can greatly improve the installation speed of cross-penetration when assembling anti-seismic brackets, reduce installation difficulty and construction intensity, and greatly save installation time and significantly reduce installation costs compared with traditional solutions.

There are more than 8 million lightning strikes in the world every day, and the lack or improper protection of electrical protection equipment will cause casualties and heavy economic losses, ABB adheres to IEC62305 standards and launches Furse copper-plated round steel solutions for the Chinese market, providing safe, reliable and cost-effective lightning protection solutions for Chinese customers. Furse lightning protection solutions can achieve a long service life, lower annual use cost, less maintenance workload and more convenient construction methods, so that the risk of personal injury loss is less than 10^-5, the risk of public service loss is less than 10^-3, and the risk of cultural genetic loss is less than 10^-4, which is one of the safer and more reliable lightning protection systems in the world.

In fact, every time a circuit breaker or switchgear is sold, there will be sales opportunities for installation accessories or connectors, and even installation products have a larger market share and larger capacity than electrical products. Dong Gang looked forward to the future installation products both in the global and Chinese markets have huge growth potential, especially ABB Electric has deployed a very stable and efficient distribution network in China, installation products can not only enjoy the dividends brought by the sales network, ABB will continue to rely on the installation of products more than 100 years of global research and development experience and resources to empower local innovation, to provide more complete product portfolio and services for the Chinese market.

With more than 100 years of accumulation empowering China's modernization, ABB has built the power industry on the basis of small installation products

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