Induction Heating
The Most Important Event for Inductotherm
Inductotherm's success came from the hard work and thinking that Rowan did on the high frequency transformer while he was with Ajax and later improved in his early days at Inductotherm. Hindle Transformer Company shipped him a faulty transformer in the mid 50's. The owner knew it was defective when it was shipped. This made Rowan angry and therefore he was ready when Brock offered to become his partner in a transformer company that the named Hunterdon. Brock or Rowan had an idea to make an epoxy encapsulated transformer that was wound around transformer iron wound into a cylinder rather than the normal rectangular stacks of iron. They called this a Toroidal transformer. Brock could not figure out how to wind hollow copper tubing around this cylinder. Rowan was the master at winding copper. Raufer remembers flying up to Hunterdon one Saturday morning to help in this project. Rowan was never ashamed to ask his salaried people to work for free late in the evening or on the weekend.
This method of winding a transformer became key to the future of the Tri-Line business. Brock could not sell to Ajax as long as Rowan was the partner and so later he convinced him to sell his share for about $60,000. The separation was strained and Rowan set up his transformer department soon afterwards.