In 1999 SET Ltd was formed to develop an innovative motor-in-wheel, the “Wheelmotor”, offering a host of improvements to the Light Rail and Tram Industries, including significant energy savings and true ‘low-floor’ designs to improve vehicle access. The project developed through the next decade spinning off a few products including rail tugs, and a prototype product retrofitted to a Blackpool tram. In parallel SET developed and sold various bespoke power electronic solutions including static frequency converters and induction heater power supplies. SET repairs a wide range of electrical and electronic equipment and assemblies, in a variety of markets including UK MOD, major railway maintenance and supply, oil exploration, marine and the Power Electronics sector.
As a part of an upgrade programme to power electronics on a passenger train, SET performed in-depth laboratory testing and applied Fourier analysis to the switching waveforms associated with the new devices to allow predictions to be made regarding the new EMC signature. This allowed us to predict that the emissions would remain comfortably within the acceptable emission envelope.
One particularly challenging investigation resulted from a case where it was not even known that there was an intermittent fault to find. All that was known was that there had been an increase in the failure rate of a particular power device. SET started the investigation by performing a statistical analysis of repair records, which indicated that failure appeared to be associated with the driver card.