IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2015 - 58

Design and Manufacturing

fig 4 A view of the NWL Transformers factory floor in the 1970s.

fig 5 NWL's high-power water-cooled
transformers can handle a power of
25,000 kVA.

transformers for very-high-horsepower adjustable-speed drives.
Today, NWL makes magnetic
components and SMPSs for a number of markets. Besides ESPs, NWL's
other major markets include oil dehydrating and desalting, electron
beam, induction heating, and corona
treating. In the military sector, the
company is providing these components for applications such as rail
guns, 2.8-MVA radar, electromagnetic aircraft launch systems, magnetic
bearings, navy shipboard power control, submarine dc power supplies,
and radar magnetics for the Australian Air Force.

4/8 kW
105/120 kW

17/21 kW

56/70 kW

fig 6 In the last 15-20 years, NWL has designed and built a number of high-power
SMPSs.

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

z December 2015

Dave started his career with NWL
Transformers in 1975 after graduating
from the University of Pennsylvania
with a degree in civil engineering. He
wanted to go to a business school after
graduation, which prompted him to
take a job at NWL to gain some working experience as well as pay for his
studies. His first project was to write
the code for a business application
program on a minicomputer like IBM
System/32. To do so, he had to learn
the programming language RPG II by
taking classes for a few weeks and
reading IBM manuals. The business
application was developed for processing business records, generating
reports, and other accounting needs of
the company. According to Dave, it
was a good exposure to business.
After working for about two years
and saving enough money, Dave went
to business school at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for a
year. While at UCLA, he had a chance
to think about his future. In 1978, he
rejoined NWL, and there was no looking back. For the next 14-plus years,
NWL Transformers continued to grow
and look beyond its traditional turf.
The company ventured into capacitors by the early 1980s. As reported by
Dave, the move was motivated by his
father, who saw that the supplier for the
high-voltage capacitors used in power
supplies for TV transmitters was unreliable and thought that there was a good
business opportunity for these products. As a supplier of three-phase transformers with rectifiers for TV transmitters, NWL saw an opportunity to build
filter capacitors to stabilize its source
of capacitors for this application. The
result was the creation of the Capacitor
Division in Florida, which has grown
substantially in the last 30 years.
Currently, NWL is a leading manufacturer of a variety of capacitors for
applications ranging from TV transmitters to high-frequency induction
heating, pulse discharge, snubber
protection, and a wide range of inverters. Besides building in-house expertise, the company also expanded
the Capacitor Division through the

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2015