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Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

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Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#41
post #40

Interested in an informed comment on the paint application part. How do they keep those spray rooms clean from paint? I noticed the robots were covered up to protect against the spray but the floor was pristine.

The floor is open grating above a pool of water that is pumped to reclaim the solids. Further the paint is electrostatically charged as it comes off the bell applicator so it is attracted to the body like a balloon to the wall.

Thanks. Was wondering about electrostatic myself. Still wondering how the grate itself doesn't get stained due to the air flow.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They paint it all together to have exactly the same color (as you well said) and avoid two painting jobs in different parts of the process. There are fewer moving parts this way, following the lean manufacturing principles. Then it is temporarily removed to create more space for the workers (as the video shows).

And the doors move in a parallel line for assembly of the door. Making it easy to maintain a one peace flow and not worry about the various options for each car on the line. And, as already pointed out, a homogenous paint job.

One thing to note is that usually most of the door itself is usually manufactured by some external supplier and the parallel assembly line in the final assembly only mates a subassembly that contains all the complexity of the door (interior paneling, speakers, buttons, DCU, airbags, locking mechanism...) to the outer door body panel.

The space of the options for that "door module" is large enough that it usually gets ordered from the manufacturer some time after the car body gets assigned to particular order (near the start of the painting step) and these modules have to reach the final assembly line in particular time and in particular order. All is well when the whole manufacturing and logistics chain works in the same order that the car orders entered the production. But in practice there is a lot of things that can cause the ordering to become desynchronized, which leads to interesting logistical challenges (especially because if there is a need to do something out of order the order discontinuity is essentially never neatly aligned to size of the containers that the subassemblies are stored and transported in).

The same thing also applies to other subassemblies that have large option spaces, but probably the only other thing with somewhat huge option space that is not manufactured directly by the automaker are completed dashboard modules.

Also, in the traditional approach the rolling chasis and the body tend to be manufactured by separate assembly lines and then "married toggether" pretty late in the whole process. But this is usually done in the same plant, so there is less of an possibility of things getting desynchronized.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#43
post #21
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.

The one that really surprised me for some reason was PCB manufacturing. The Strange Parts YouTube channel has a few tours of Chinese factories, and I guess I pictured that it's just some sort of giant clean room with a long conveyor belt that goes through all the processes on its own. So I was not expecting it to start with grabbing a blank PCB from a pile stored outside and taking a band saw to it. Such a mix of hig…

The board level electronics assembly is mostly an solved problem that can be automated perfectly fine, but when you get to through-hole almost nobody does it, because (a) the THT capable pick and place machines are uncummon and thus somewhat expensive (b) it often requires more expensive parts that are compatible with such machines (better geometry tolerances, surfaces for the machine to pick them...) and finally (c) the NRE costs of getting that to work.

That said, then there are niches where the automated THT assembly apparently makes sense and all the NRE costs seem to be offset by lower per-unit costs of the PCB material itself. Prime example is mid-range to high-end home AV equipment (Japanese branded if not made in Japan outright), where the large mostly empty single-sided FR-2 boards with truly ridiculous amounts of obviously machine populated wire-links and discrete THT radial components are particularly striking.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#44

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

Speaking of inspection, I was actually wondering what they do with rejected units. It would seem hard to fix problems once the car is already assembled, so do they just trash them?

At least some of the rejects are crash tested.

Re: Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen some Indian panelbeaters do miracles on a wrecked car - cutting away a not only a rear quarter panel but half of a floorplan (FWD) but welding a replacement in sutu and then using a chassis jig to pull to straight again. Don't think it will work on your CyberTruck - Tesla repairs are astronomical in normal fender benders.

What you describe might work in the developing world. In the induszrialized west, such a repair makes a car not road worthy.

I've seen a lot of those videos on TikTok and had the same thought. No way would I get into one of those cars.
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