Monday, November 13, 2023

"Volvo Joins Tesla, Toyota in Giga Press Game"

This is the story I was going for at Industrial Equipment News when I was sidetracked by "Folks Lining Up for Elon Musk's Brain Implants". It's not as if we are new to the Neuralink story, we've been tracking it since 2016's "Elon Musk Is Making Progress On His Neural Lace Brain Hack To Defeat AI And Prevent the Takeover Of the Human Mind" and then the flurry of activity in 2017:

And dozens more links since then.

No, what was different abut the IEN story was this detail:

The Neuralink has a fairly short battery life but can be wirelessly recharged in a few hours using a special baseball hat designed by the team....

And this one:

Bloomberg said it turned a former ax throwing bar into a small production facility...

What, pray tell, is an ax throwing bar? 

So, on to enormous metal presses. From Industrial Equipment News, November 10:

These 9,000-ton presses are about the size of a small home.

Italian high-pressure die casting company Idra Group announced a new contract with Swedish luxury vehicle manufacturer Volvo Cars that will introduce a pair of 9,000-ton Giga Press machines to a Volvo factory in Slovakia. 

With a customer base that already includes Tesla, Ford and Hyundai, Idra advertises its Giga Presses as machines that can assist the automotive industry’s transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. 

The 9,000-ton Giga Presses are about the size of a small home and can generate a clamping force of over 9,000 tons. According to Idra, the equipment enables the production of lightweight and complex vehicle components in a manner that saves energy and reduces waste....

....MUCH MORE

Previously on the big machines:
Tesla's Margins? Thank Gigapresses (TSLA)

Toyota, Having Recently Decided To Be An Electric Vehicle Maker, Goes Large-by-Large By Incorporating Other's Innovation
And with Ford and now Toyota following suit, Elon is trying to stay ahead of the competition with the next innovation. From Technology.org, September 15:
Tesla Aims to ‘Gigacast’ the Underbody of Its EVs as a Single Piece

Tesla has achieved a significant technological breakthrough that could revolutionize its electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing process. Now, the company is nearly ready to die-cast – or gigacast, as Elon Musk calls it – nearly the entire underbody of its EVs as a single piece.

Tesla originally introduced the concept of “gigacasting” by utilizing massive presses with clamping pressures ranging from 6,000 to 9,000 tons to mold the front and rear structures of its Model Y. This innovative approach substantially lowered production costs, placing other automakers in a race to catch up.

To further solidify its lead, Tesla is now on the brink of a groundbreaking development that would enable the die casting of nearly the entire complex underbody of an EV as a single piece. This stands in stark contrast to traditional cars, which require approximately 400 individual parts for the underbody.

This gigacasting expertise forms a critical component of Tesla’s “unboxed” manufacturing strategy, unveiled by CEO Elon Musk in March. It is a cornerstone of Musk’s plan to produce tens of millions of more affordable EVs in the next decade while maintaining profitability....

....MUCH MORE

From what I understand, Mr. Musk also runs a few other businesses.

I'm still working on a to-do list for last week. 

And about the ax throwing bars, do people actually drink and throw axes? 

I guess so.

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