For any market-leading engineering organisation, it is vital to remain at the cutting-edge of technology and continue to deliver innovative solutions that drive improved performance and value for customers.
This means committing fully to research and development, making the necessary resources available to advance the market by identifying the ‘next generation’ solutions, and then driving the development process to turn those visions into reality.
moveero has a long history of developing, designing, and delivering truly innovative solutions, all of which are backed by the company’s engineering excellence, market understanding and technical expertise.
This innate ability to look at market needs and identify innovative products dates back to the early 1900s and one of the company’s earliest incarnations. Then known as Joseph Sankey & Sons Ltd (or simply ‘Sankeys’), the company was responsible for patenting and manufacturing the world’s first pressed steel wheel.
In 1908, Sankeys developed the first pressed and welded detachable wheel, for which it was granted the company’s first patent. This proved to be the first in a very long line of patents, granted both in the UK and internationally.
Originally manufactured for motor cars, the steel wheel represented a significant engineering breakthrough, made possible by the technological advances of the time. In particular, this was through the production of new, high-quality steel alloys and rolling machinery, which provided customers with a light weight, cost saving solution. Known as the ‘All Steel Wheel’, it entered full production at the Hadley Castle Works in Telford — which is still home to moveero’s manufacturing operation in the UK.
moveero has always believed firmly in protecting its technological advances and product and process innovations, and from that first technical innovation, the company has continued to lead the market in steel wheels, regularly introducing new products both to the automotive and increasingly the off-highway sectors. Many of these new products were successfully patented.
In the company’s early days, patent filing did not only take place in the UK. In 1968, moveero’s plant in Iowa USA, known then as Noakes Rim and Wheel, applied for and was granted a different kind of patent, not for the design of a wheel, but for the manufacturing process of the drop centre wheel.
This was the first of a series of process patents that the company would be granted, such that today it holds a huge international portfolio of Intellectual Property (IP), including patents for products and manufacturing processes, registered designs protecting the appearance of its products, and an array of trademarks.
Why invest in patents?
A patent is an Intellectual Property right that protects an invention. In the UK, a patent for a new invention is granted by the UK Intellectual Property Office and gives the patent owner the right to control who uses, makes, and sells their invention for up to 20 years. Essentially, to be patentable, an invention must be new, industrially applicable and involve an inventive step (not simply an obvious development of something that is already known).
Applying for any sort of IP protection is an investment of both time and money, with the applicant invariably having to commit considerable resources across research and development, testing, materials, labour and approval. In a sense then, IP is both a measure of commitment and a statement of intent, with companies only making the investment decision if they are serious players.
For customers, IP provides reassurance (in much the same way as quality control standards), in that with the IP keeping copycats at bay, they know they are buying the “real deal” rather than a cheap imitation. Also investing considerable amounts of time and money in protecting a product is a demonstration of a company’s belief in that product and its ability to deliver real advantages to customers.
Once secured though, IP rights become a valuable business asset, which need managing during the life of the product or process to safeguard the business’ interests. Looking at IP across the moveero portfolio, there is a clear commitment from the company to innovation and process improvements, at the heart of which is a determination to provide its customers with unique, innovative solutions that solve their problems, improve their performance and/ or deliver cost savings. This may be a solution for machinery original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), or for end users in any of the sectors in which the company operates, agriculture, construction, material handling, automotive, etc.
moveero’s specific product patents
With a broad portfolio of patents covering over 18 territories globally, the following are examples of moveero’s product patents, each demonstrating innovative and novel solutions to address problems faced by the company’s customers:
Profi-Fit: Low pressure tyres are used extensively to minimise the risk of soil compaction, but typically they have stiffer walls which makes them more difficult to fit. Profi-Fit wheels were designed and patented to address this problem, offering a smooth transition between rim well and tyre bead seat, with a rolled-over flange improving rim strength and minimising the risk of tyre damage during installation. With reduced material and an improved profile, the rim is also lighter and stronger, and incorporates a unique ‘double bump’ radius design at the critical point where traditional rims are susceptible to ultimate fatigue failure. Profi-Fit reduces stress whilst maintaining strength and performance. The strength of the profile allowed moveero to reduce the thickness of material by 10%.
Profi-Fit became the first product launched in moveero’s ‘Profi’ family in 2008, and this approach to designing wheels as solutions to customers problems is now firmly established as the company’s default approach to product development.
Profi-Line+: 2011 saw a patent granted for Profi Line rims, with the product then evolving to Profi-Line+ in 2017. This evolution featured an enhanced rim to better match with the newest tyres on the market. Profi-Line+ features a rim profile designed to improve the life of a rim used with flotation tyres, by reducing stresses in the structure. Developed specifically for agricultural trailed and other load bearing vehicles, this innovative wheel minimises stress on the critical radii by around 40%, compared with a traditional rim shape.
Profi-Line+ meets the very specific requirements of heavy duty, high load-bearing flotation tyres, subjected to sustained periods of intensive use. With a loading capacity that is 20% higher and a wider bead area, the design offers a five-fold increase in fatigue life.
Another moveero patented product is Profi-Grip (launched in 2015), which features a unique profile, developed to eliminate tyre-to-rim slippage. This is particularly important when using low inflation pressure to maximise the ‘footprint’ of the tyre and so the transfer of power from tractor to soil.
Other examples include Profi-Hub the company’s hub system, which was designed to increase carrying capacity with improved bearing performance and improved servicing, and Profi-Flex HS, a wheel-centring spacer for adjustable wheels which ensures that discs are located in the correct position when a wheel is dis-assembled and then re-assembled.
Process patents
As well as product patents, moveero also holds process patents (which as the name suggests covers processes). An example is the company’s Hot Induction Forming patent which was granted in 2013. It covers the manufacturing process of making a one-piece rim base for multipiece wheels, using an induction heating method, located on the tooling.
The wheels trademarked as Infini-Forge are manufactured using this method, and are designed for vehicles operating in safety critical, demanding situations that require durability and stability, for example container handling vehicles and airport tractors. The revolutionary process achieves exceptional manufacturing accuracy, allowing material to be placed where it is needed, doubling the lifetime of the rim for high load bearing vehicles using high pressure tyres.
Registered and granted patents in the moveero portfolio not only protect complete rims and wheels, but also cover complementary accessories to the rim and wheel system. This means that the whole wheel system is protected, not just the appearance of the rim, or its process of manufacture.
Such a patent was granted to moveero’s USA team in 2022, for their ‘low profile driver system’ design. Development of this system evolved over a number of years and was carried out in conjunction with one of the company’s key global OEM customers. The customer was having a problem on vehicles with multipiece driver systems which were being damaged and displaced when vehicles’ wheels came in contact with hard surfaces. The moveero R&D team, based in Illinois, USA, designed a solution to address this issue, whereby the driver systems work with moveero’s cold form flange to protect the driver key.
moveero’s Chief Engineer, USA, Aaron Dahl, commented: “The team worked on this design for a number of years and receiving the patent certificate was a welcome recognition of the work we undertook. It is also a testament to the way we approach our work and how we strive to support our customers and find solutions to the challenges they come up against. The patent protects the concept for 20 years and is a real differentiator in the market for moveero”.
Finally, the company’s Chief Engineer perfectly encapsulated why securing patents and protecting IP is so important to moveero: “The innovative designs, features, and benefits that each wheel provides to customers are all unique, and only available from moveero. To many people, wheels are just round, available in different sizes, and they’ve been around for thousands of years. But we are regularly disproving the old adage that ‘you shouldn’t re-invent the wheel’: our development teams are literally doing just that on a daily basis!”
Source: Tyretradenews
