Collaboration between ESA BIC alumni: APO-GEE and VEOWARE

APO-GEE is a deep-tech start-up founded in Liège in early 2022, after more than 10 years of intensive research on ball bearing dynamics. The company specializes in ball bearing engineering and solutions, with a primary focus on the space industry.

APO-GEE is an ESA BIC alumnus and has received support by ESA to transfer their solutions from space to other industries, including high-precision machinery.

VEOWARE is a company based in Leuven that develops next-gen motion control systems & robotics for spacecraft. Among many things, they make the reaction wheels used to control attitude in satellites, especially the ones between 50 and 1000 kg.
They are also an ESA BIC alumnus.

Seeing that the two companies were active in slightly overlapping domains, ESA suggested the 2 companies to collaborate.

In the words of Julien Demonty, managing director of VEOWARE: “We noticed a weird noise randomly appearing from the flywheel. After long investigation, we suspected bearing cage activity. We were advised by ESA to contact APO-GEE to further investigate this issue. APO-GEE helped us confirm the root cause and proposed a solution.”

Christophe Servais, co-founder and CTO of APO-GEE, added: “The cage instability problem is a chaotic phenomenon, which implies that it cannot be solved by purely computational methods or even AI.”

The company’s comprehensive understanding of the kinematics of the ball bearings and cage dynamics allowed them to model and accurately predict the causes of instability.

Verhaert, as the ESA Tech Broker for Belgium, is assisting APO-GEE further with their tech transfer to non-space industries that could benefit from this expertise, in particular in high-precision automation.

Sébastien Assouad, co-founder and CEO of APO-GEE, remarked: “We have been in contact with several machine-tool spindle manufacturers, and all have confirmed a problem of ‘rattling noise’ that occurs unexpectedly and causes vibrations, even with new or relatively new bearings. Until now, the only solution available to these manufacturers was to replace the bearings. We deeply analyzed the problem and the bearings involved and demonstrated that it was a cage instability issue. Here too, the Butterfly Cage provides a definitive solution to the problem.”

Besides space applications and high-precision machining, other possible destination industries could be automotive and defense. Verhaert will work with APO-GEE to maximize the reach of their solution.