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Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

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Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#11

Post by Vespasian »

rootcage wrote: post #6

I'm always surprised by the amount of human labor involved, I tend to think of manufacturing as mostly robots but there are numerous manual steps.

I was surprised to learn that the production of stamping tools, used to shape panels from sheet stock, involves lots of manual passes to bring them to the quality and finish required by car manufacturers.

After machine milling them roughly to spec there are employees that angle grind, sandpaper and polish every critical surface of these 10 ton chunks of metal.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#12

Post by Animats »

If you've never seen it, watch "Master Hands".[1] This is a very good movie of auto manufacturing in the 1930s.

Those workers went on strike a few years after that, in 1939, and won. That ended the "Chrysler Speed Up Initiative".

[1] https://archive.org/details/masterhandscomplete4kh264

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#14

Post by londons_explore »

dartharva wrote: post #10

The assembly and inspection stages involve surprisingly more manual labor than I had imagined.

Cars are made in smaller volumes than most people imagine.

Compare to toilet paper production... Your family perhaps consumes 100 rolls of toilet paper per year, and perhaps 0.1 cars per year (typical lifetime of a car is ~20 years).

So there is 1000x the benefit to any time saving by automation on the toilet paper production line than on the car production line.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#17

Post by mgoetzke »

u320 wrote: post #8
grecy wrote: post #2

It will be fascinating to see how much this changes after Tesla put their next-gen vehicle into mass production. They talked the big talk at Investor Day this year, and Elon said it again this past week that "The revolution in manufacturing that will be represented by that car will blow people's minds". [1] I'm cautiously optimistic. The more we learn about Cybertruck, the more we learn they're seriously moving the y…

He said that about the Model 3 as well. Turned out he was wrong, as any automotive manufacturing engineer would have told him.

They are quite fast now, and i would surmise more experienced, and he did say he was wrong trying to automate all way too quickly.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#18

Post by leoedin »

If you like this, there's an excellent 30 minute video following the Dacia Duster production line - https://youtu.be/32eWkuIHLoE?si=T-gud6AG1PCD1gep

It's much more relaxed, with little commentary - and really shows every step. Having done some very rudimentary work around manufacturing and testing, it's pretty incredible to see how much work - jigs, robot programming, test software etc - goes into the manufacturing machine.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#20

Post by javiramos »

leoedin wrote: post #18

If you like this, there's an excellent 30 minute video following the Dacia Duster production line - https://youtu.be/32eWkuIHLoE?si=T-gud6AG1PCD1gep It's much more relaxed, with little commentary - and really shows every step. Having done some very rudimentary work around manufacturing and testing, it's pretty incredible to see how much work - jigs, robot programming, test software etc - goes into the manufacturing m…

Excellent video of the BMW i3 production line: https://youtu.be/pa5_tudyAF8?
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