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Gigapresses – the die casts reshaping car manufacturing
- seydor 4y agoThey are great until you take a look at the price of aluminum
- HPsquared 4y agoCar structures are often made of aluminum anyway, do these parts use significantly more than e.g. bonded extrusions?
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoThese presses are for complex and fairly thick structural parts. Think like radiator core supports, subframes, dashboard support structures and control arms. Yhe resultant parts are substantially more expensive than the stamped and welded steel they replace. The range of cost difference vs steel also wide because the complexity of the part and the shape of the part affect the service life and initial cost of the die a lot. Some parts lend themselves well to the process, some don't. What this increased expense buys you is weight and NVH improvements. In previous cases aluminum has been used for car bodies and cosmetic sheet-metal panels. The cost difference vs steel is not nearly as large in that application.
- bluetomcat 4y agoBig car manufacturers use their own modular platforms for the chassis of different vehicles, in order to optimise R&D and production costs. An upsized vehicle from the range usually uses the same basic platform with a few size adjustments here and there. "Gigacasting" would require them to create moulds for every individual part.
- ajross 4y agoI did, actually. Looks like aluminum is down about 60% from a peak last year, and sitting about 20% higher than its pre-pandemic level (which inflation-corrected isn't much of a change at all). Is there a specific point you're trying to make? Or you're just saying steel is cheaper?
- seydor 4y agoNo i mean the machines are great but the war is making the cost of cars uncertain and probably high
- alfor 4y agoIt’s mostly stored electricity and completely recyclable.
- robocat 4y agoSure, pure aluminium is. Surely the Tesla parts will be special alloys to get the correct plastic deformation during crashes (amongst other constraints). I would guess special alloys could require different recycling paths, or recycling to lower value impure material? Then again, it must be a solved problem, which I should bing!
- pixl97 4y agoWeight is negative fuel and must be considered in the equation.
- xnx 4y agoAluminum holds its value
- londons_explore 4y agoWith a typical car having 200kg of aluminium, thats $400. Substantial, but not massively so for the chassis of a $60,000 car.
- jiggawatts 4y agoI made a similar argument to explain that science fiction technologies like "asteroid mining" won't improve the cost of everyday products like cars. Even if the material costs were reduced to zero, the sticker price would remain essentially unchanged. Elon Musk made a similar point about the inefficiency of NASA-style rocket construction. The "raw materials" to make a rocket cost something like $500K, but the completed launch vehicle is often north of a billion dollars. The SLS program currently costs a whopping $4B per launch! Even if you got all the "expensive" materials like titanium or carbon fibre for free, the SLS launches would still cost too much.
- 01100011 4y agoEV passenger vehicles are great until you look at the supply of copper. Seriously, I love my car, but I also understand that we can't have everyone in one. Mass transit, walking, biking, e-bikes, etc... These are all competitors to EVs and unless we have a revolution in production requiring less copper or increases in copper supply, coupled with large increases in energy production, we're not giving everyone a cheap EV and the sort of mobility ICE drivers have had over the last 100 years.
- scythe 4y agoGoogle indicates that a typical electric car contains 183 pounds of copper. That's a lot! But a typical house contains 470 pounds. That's even more. So I'm not convinced that cars alone will dominate the market for copper.
- 01100011 4y agoDoes that include copper pipes, which are being phased out? Regardless, it matters. Nearly everything that is being electrified, including formerly gas appliances like water heaters and stoves, will require more copper. Unlike lithium, we do not appear to have readily available reserves of copper that aren't already being extracted. Unlike lithium, there is no suitable competitor right now like you have with sodium.
- scythe 4y agoThe majority is in wiring, but pipes are included in the average. Aluminum wiring is a thing, but allowance must be made for its high coefficient of thermal expansion, which has led to fires with aluminum wiring in the past. Overall, I would agree that copper is one of the tightest resources right now (moreso than nickel or lithium) but I don't think it's going to create a worldwide crisis. Applications where switching to aluminum is the least difficult will probably be changed first. But do also notice: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201806792 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201806...
- londons_explore 4y ago
- chrisjc 4y agoNo great for those who probably didn't lock in their prices long ago. I assume those that have bet long on gigapresses also had the presence of mind to think ahead about the cost of everything related.
- cs702 4y agoSo far, only Tesla is using giga-presses to reduce the number of parts that must be welded together in each vehicle and lower costs. Other car manufacturers have barely started exploring the possible use of these giga-presses, and seem reluctant to transition away from time-tested approaches to manufacturing. Quoting from the OP: > After initially considering die casting for its upcoming Trinity model, Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has backtracked, while BMW (BMWG.DE) has never expressed an interest. Ferrario said the auto industry tended to be conservative and that no one liked upending established processes, but he rejected idea that die casting posed a risk to jobs at carmakers, noting body-making was already highly automated. Thanks in part to its use of these giga-presses, Tesla currently has the highest profit margins of any mainstream car company. It's not a coincidence.
- senttoschool 4y agoIs it the gigapress that allows Tesla to have high margins? Could it also be that EV cars are subsidized around the world by governments? Maybe Tesla's "self driving beta" addon adds to the profit more? I genuinely don't know.
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttps://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/1016533.html https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/1... > The secret behind Tesla’s 30% gross margin > The company's Q3 sales rose 58% year-on-year despite a 6% decrease in average selling price, allowing for high margins for the electric vehicle manufacturer > Analysts point to another factor behind Tesla's high profit margin. Park Hyung-keun, a senior researcher at POSCO Research Institute, said, "Through vertical integration by directly being involved from floor design to parts supply and demand, production and service, Tesla has helped reduce costs by raising the degree of its parts integration and cutting overlapping costs." > Tesla's unique structure of vertical integration, ranging from the development of semiconductor chips, software and batteries for electric vehicles, to charging, unmanned driving and insurance services, helps lower costs. Its “do-it-all” approach simplifies the automotive production process in a manner resembling that of electronic products. In contrast, other automakers actively utilize production outsourcing to diversify vehicle quality risks and raise output efficiency. > A leading example is Tesla's “giga” aluminum die-casting process. A Giga Press weighing more than 1 giga pound (400 tonnes, or around 900,000 pounds) stamps the entire rear chassis of a car with a large aluminum alloy. About 70 metal plates can be welded to the chassis, but giga casting can simplify the process and slash production costs by about 40%. This is why Tesla electric vehicles have recently reduced panel gaps issues — defects caused by misaligned steel plate seams.
- bannedbybros 4y ago[dead]
- kjksf 4y agoFun fact: Musk says that when Tesla was thinking about doing gigacasting, they called 6 suppliers of those machines asking if they can make 6 gigaton machine (which didn't exist at the time). 5 out of 6 said "no" and 1 said "maybe". I'm guessing that "maybe" was IDRA and they made 6 gigaton, then 9 gigaton (already in Texas for making Cybertruck) and there are rumors of 12 gigaton machine in development. Another fun fact: Tesla body line pre gigapress was 1000 robots. Doing front casting removed 300 robots, rear casting another 300. So Tesla saved 600 out of 1000 (60%) robots, so the line is shorter and faster.
- realworldperson 4y ago[dead]
- toomuchtodo 4y agoSandy Munro's teardown of one of the first Model 3s (circa 2019) and his advice to Tesla in ~200 initial manufacturing improvements was integral in shifting their manufacturing strategy (and also led to the termination of the person who designed the body). A more recent 2021 teardown has a lot of praise for the latest build quality. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-sandy-munro-analyst-data-video/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-sandy-munro-analyst-... ("Tesla and Munro have since communicated, with the auto veteran sending the electric car maker a list of over 200 pro bono suggestions that could improve the Model 3’s body, which he believed was over-engineered. Munro himself spoke with Elon Musk, who explained that the person responsible for the Model 3’s body design had been terminated. In response, Munro told the CEO that the response was “not fast enough,” since Tesla “never should have hired (the engineer)” in the first place.") https://www.teslaoracle.com/2021/01/26/2021-tesla-model-3-sandy-munro-praise/ https://www.teslaoracle.com/2021/01/26/2021-tesla-model-3-sa... ("2021 Tesla Model 3 is as good as anything you could find out of Europe, says Sandy Munro")
- dumpsterlid 4y ago[dead]
- YeahNO 4y ago
- ape4 4y agoIs it repairable? (genuine question)
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoSeems to result the car being totaled. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/t-boned-totaled-or-will-insurance-make-us-repair.172320/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/t-boned-totaled-or-w...
- sliken 4y agoThe equation is a bit different for Teslas. The battery or even a fraction of a battery has substantial value on the used market. There's even a section on ebay just for Tesla batteries.
- dawnerd 4y agoI was tboned in my brand new s (there’s a thread on it on tmc)and they finally declared it a loss after three months. Looking at it didn’t seem like that much damage but yeah once the frame is even slightly skewed it’s done.
- pixl97 4y agoIn general most modern cars are totaled when the unibody construction gets bent. The car gets written off by insurance and sold at an auction for low price. The repair people typically buy 2 cars and weld them together if possible. Otherwise the unit is parted out. No real idea on how this would work on a Tesla though.
- londons_explore 4y ago> . The repair people typically buy 2 cars and weld them together if possible. The repair people also commonly just straighten out the bent part and resell (sometimes shipping overseas first to a place where less attention is paid to bent crumple zones)
- 4y ago
- mikewarot 4y ago9,000 tons is a lot of force... but we've done much bigger presses[1] I fail to see how the prefix "Giga" - 10^9 applies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoa_50,000_ton_forging_press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoa_50,000_ton_forging_press
- bryanlarsen 4y ago9,000 tonnes is 9 Gigagrams.
- idontwantthis 4y agoEverything is giga-something.
- playingalong 4y agoRight. But to their defense, gram is the unit without prefix.
- mikewarot 4y agoso, 9 Kilotons they should call it the KiloPress
- pif 4y ago1000 tons = 10^9 grams
- londons_explore 4y agoI don't think those presses would be suitable for car manufacturing because they weren't fast... Ie. rather than a cycle time of ~50 seconds, they had a cycle time of many hours.
- mikewarot 4y agoWhat makes you think they had such a slow cycle time? I can't find any hint of that, there are videos showing cycle times with a part only taking a minute or so.
- sonofhans 4y agoOne things this means is that cars are going to become as disposable as cell phones and laptops. As cars get assembled from larger components, damage to one area of the car will have larger effects. This will increase repair costs, more often pushing them over the limit to declare the car a total loss. I can’t quickly find the numbers, but I know that car repair costs are going up and repair rates are going down, and have been for decades. The reason is obvious: the benefits of a modern car come at a cost. E.g., cars are much safer now, partly thanks to airbags; those are expensive to replace. My car has 11 airbags, and if they all popped off at once that alone would probably total it. Years ago I was in a collision which bent that frame of my car. That’s usually game-ending, but this car has a modular frame, so they just bolted on a new frame component. Now, Mercedes have always (until lately, perhaps) been known as highly-repairable; it’s one reason they last so long. So it’s good that the right-to-repair movement is getting traction. We’re going to need to point it at cars soon, and for mechanical reasons.
- sacrosancty 4y ago[dead]
- bryanlarsen 4y agoThe reason that your Mercedes was worth repairing was because it was so expensive. Most cars get written off with $15,000 worth of damage simply because most cars aren't worth $15,000.
- sonofhans 4y agoActually, I got it used for about that amount, and many years before the collision. You may not know -- forgive me if I'm wrong -- but damage to a car frame totals the car. Frames have crumple zones, the activation of which destroys that part of the frame. No insurance company will sanction repair of it. This only worked because the frame was modular to begin with, a rarity, so they could replace only the damaged part. IOW the car was built to be repairable. This increased its final cost, but means that it's still on the road today, rather than in a scrapyard.
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- Awelton 4y agoLooks like in the case of minor body damage you will have to cut and flush weld patches in the body instead of bolting on a new panel like they currently do. Aftermarket modular body panels are extremely cheap, and repairs consist of spraying a new panel and removing and installing a couple bolts and clips. This new method will make car manufacturers more money but will inevitably drive insurance and repair costs higher. This is a negative for car buyers, and the cheaper manufacturer costs won't necessarily be reflected in sales prices. There have been tons of manufacturing breakthroughs in the last few decades that have made vehicles cheaper and easier to produce and prices just keep getting higher and higher.
- jackmott42 4y agoThese giga-pressed components are distinct from the body panels.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoBent structural components are almost invariably a write-off no matter what kind of car you have.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoIt depends. I did Au$10,000 to a car valued at $12,000, almost all of the damage was non-visible suspension and structural. The quoting repairer had high confidence in the repairs before starting, so the insurer went ahead. The car drove like new after the repairs, dead straight, smooth af. If even a small fraction of that damage had been on, say, the pillars it'd had been a write off.
- ajross 4y ago"Minor body damage" usually means paneling and brackets. Chassis damage to aluminum frames almost always means replacement AFAICT, which for all but the newest cars is more than the cost of replacement anyway. Remember also that modern crumple zone design deliberately sacrifices the frame as part of the collision for safety reasons. Basically, this doesn't seem right to me. If you're hit hard enough to bend the frame, your car is totalled anyway. And that's the way we want it.
- flerchin 4y agoHydraulic Press Channel needs this immediately. Lauri only goes to ~140 tons.
- bitwize 4y agoSo we're building real cars the way we manufacture Hot Wheels? Neat. We're living in the Gunbuster future, in which mecha were shipped in giant blister packaging and spaceship parts came on huge plastic model kit rails.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoTesla’s leadership here is incentivizing huge efficiency gains which will help the world adopt EVs much faster than otherwise.
- jgalt212 4y ago> Battery packs currently make up 25%-40% of the total cost of BEVs. > Automakers using aluminium casting machines claim they can reduce investments needed to build chassis - a vehicle's second most expensive component after the engine - by 40%, and the average cost of their parts by 30%, Ferrario said. I'm having trouble with the math. 40% battery 41% chassis 42% engine 123% ! or 25% battery 26% chassis 27% engine 78% total (rest of car ~ 22%)
- redundantly 4y ago> I'm having trouble with the math. The trouble you're having is taking it literally. These are averages, not absolutes.
- lallysingh 4y agoBattery: 40%. Leaves the remainder: 60%. Chassis is the most expensive component of that remainder (no engine in EVs). Let's pretend the battery and chassis are the only two parts: 40% + ((1-40%)*60%) = 40%+36% = 76% cost of original. 24% reduction.
- flavius29663 4y ago> reduce investments needed to build chassis - a vehicle's second most expensive component after the engine - by 40%, and To me this is pretty clear: the press reduces the cost of the chassis by 40%. It could be 10%, 80% of the total cost of the car, it doesn't say.
- notJim 4y ago> 123% ! Now you understand why EVs cost so much more than ICE vehicles!
- mvidal01 4y agoThis youtube video seems related. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpgK51w6uhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpgK51w6uhk This is the story of America's massive forging presses built during the cold war used to build America's most advanced machinery - the Heavy Press Program. Modern airplanes, missiles, helicopters, turbines - all have parts made on these giant machines! The Machine Thinking channel seems interesting.
- baybal2 4y agoIt's unrelated, that's the thing. IDRA's "press" is a casting machine, not press forging.
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y agoDuring WW2 Germany had the biggest steam presses in the world - allowing them to build airplanes from bigger components pressed into shape, while all the other countries had to use a lot more smaller components bolted together. Made Nazi planes lighter and stronger than what every one else had. All these presses where in East Germanay (mostly Berlin and Brandenburg) and after the end of WW2 felt in Soviet hands, together with plans for even bigger presses - which the Soviets did build. The British Empire was so short on cash at the time that they sold their jet engine designs to Stalin. Good frames and good jet engines made Soviet jets at least equal to the American in the 1950s.
- jameshart 4y agoI am not an expert so I am confused by terminology here. These machines are referred to as ‘presses’, but the technique is referred to as ‘die casting’. my naive understanding is that pressing to form things would be more a form of ‘forging’ than ‘casting’. Doesn’t casting refer to molding things from molten metal? Is the distinction that die casting done at higher pressure than some other form of casting, to produce results more akin to injection molding, and therefore requires ‘presses’ to hold the tool dies in place? Or am I misunderstanding words completely?
- tristor 4y agoThe difference between casting and die casting, is that casting is done with a sacrificial mold at lower pressures, die casting is done at high pressure using a tool die that is reused multiple times. Die casting is essentially stamping out a part at high pressure from semi-molten material, vs liquefying material to be poured into a low pressure mold. Die casting has a lot of advantages, but is generally much more expensive as a manufacturing process, and that expense scales exponentially with part size. "Forging" is mostly a marketing term at this point, depending on the type of product you're talking about, but it generally refers to a combination of die casting and CNC machining.
- jameshart 4y agoIsn’t sheet metal ‘stamping’ a forging process? I’m not sure it only has a marketing meaning these days. But then the only time I see stuff marketed as ‘forged’ these days is typically ‘drop forged’ tools, and I realized I also have no sense of what process ‘drop forging’ might involve. I guess I vaguely assumed some sort of drop hammer?
- seb1204 4y agoNot sure about forging being a marketing term. Forging in my understanding referee to the raw steel bring red hot and then manipulated by pressing, rolling or hammering into a desired shape. This often requires multiple cycles of reheating and manipulation. This is then often followed by CNC machining. I also recall that grain structure is different in forged materials compared to casting. A casted part will often be machined but not reshaped by e.g. hammering.
- intrasight 4y agoIt was reading about the Telsa Gigapresses that led me to invest in Tesla. Between this and their software platform, they are, I believe, poised to leave the competition in the dust. Next step would be for me to buy one - not there yet.