The way cars are produced is changing profoundly, also to respond to growing environmental and geopolitical challenges. And Italy is among the protagonists of this revolution
In the automotive sector the word of the moment is “mega casting“, often used as a synonym for “giga casting“. Whether it is mega or giga, little changes: it is a new technology that simplifies, optimizes and speeds up the production of some key car components through the use of giant hydraulic presses (die casting machinesin English) installed directly inside car factories. The largest producers of these machines in the world are the Chinese of LK Technology, the Italians of Idra Group (a company of the LK group) and the Swiss of Bühler. The first car company to understand that mega casting could revolutionize the automotive world was Tesla, but soon the Chinese made the same choice and, now, the other players in the market are also equipping themselves with machinery of this type.
WHAT DOES MEGA CASTING MEAN
—
Mega casting is, essentially, a “mega merger” of aluminum at very high pressure, made possible by a gigantic hydraulic press equipped with three moulds: one used for the actual production, which is replaced with a second mold during scheduled maintenance, and a third mold which serves as a spare in case of problems. By injecting molten aluminum into the mold it is possible to produce, in one go and in just a few minutes, very large parts of the body of a car which, with previous production methods, were also composed of a hundred small parts welded or connected to each other with bolts. After the component is printed, a robotic arm picks it up and immerses it in a water bath for cooling and takes it to a subsequent press that removes the burrs, recovering the excess aluminum and sending it back to the furnace for melting. The entire process is monitored with sophisticated electronic eyes and each part produced is constantly measured in order to avoid even the slightest form error. In a nutshell, therefore, mega casting consists in using the technique of die castingwhich has already been used for some time to produce small and medium-sized parts, even for large and very large parts: in the future it will be used to create an entire body.
THE ADVANTAGES OF MEGA CASTING
—
The main advantage of this production method is the simplification of the process: if previously it was necessary to receive, store, assemble and check dozens and dozens of pieces, in fact, with a single casting most of the problems are eliminated at the root. Among the problems avoided there are also those of possible external suppliers, which in recent years have proven to be one of the critical points of supply chain global automotive industry. Mega casting, in perspective, allows car manufacturers to centralize production and reduce the risk that a problem with a supplier on the other side of the world will block an entire factory for days. From an engineering point of view, then, the advantages are many: the components printed with these machines are more robustmore lightthey have no wasted space for joints or connecting bolts and this allows you to produce lighter cars and who consume less. Furthermore, from an economic point of view, a piece produced in this way has a much more predictable cost in the long term: only an increase in metal raw materials, or electricity, can have an impact. Finally, there is a huge benefit to combining mega casting with another emerging technology,artificial intelligence.
MEGA CASTING AND AI
—
By combining this fusion technique with artificial intelligence it is possible to do things that were previously unthinkable. In a conventionally produced car, for example, a real nightmare for engineers are the shock absorption zones in the event of an accident. If the data expected during the design phase does not emerge from the crash tests, it is necessary to make adjustments modifications to the vehicle structurein order to obtain the initially desired result. But if the part of the car to be modified is made up of a hundred or more components, it is necessary to calculate the behavior of each of these components after the modifications and, in some cases, it is also necessary to change one component with another to obtain the result required for homologation. In practice it involves redoing the calculations from scratch, dozens and dozens of times, with very long times. AI can greatly speed up this procedure by creating a digital twin of the section of the car (or the entire car) to be used in crash simulations in order to know how the vehicle will behave in the impact phase even before sending it against a wall. If we match the design flexibility allowed by the AI to production flexibility permitted by mega casting (which, let us remember, reduces the components of each section of the car to a minimum), we have made every automotive engineer’s dream come true.
MEGA CASTING MACHINES
—
Simplifying greatly, and apologizing in advance to the engineers, we can say that what makes the difference between what a mega hydraulic press can produce and what it cannot is mainly the maximum pressure which can be imparted to the aluminum melt. This pressure, commonly called the “power” of the press, is measured in thousands of tons. Recently the Chinese car manufacturer Dongfeng Motor put into operation the most powerful hydraulic press in the automotive world, which has a maximum pressure of 16,000 tons, inside a factory in Wuhan where a second press, of 10,000 tons, was also assembled. Both machines are made in China by LK Technologieswhich is the leader of this market as well as the same holding company that also owns another leading company in the sector: la Idra Group of Brescia. Curiously, the Italian headquarters of the Swiss company is also in Brescia Bühlerthe third largest manufacturer of hydraulic presses for the automotive industry. Volvo technicians were sent to the Bühler plant in Brescia to learn how to manage and maintain the two Carat 840 presses with 8,400 tonnes of pressure that were installed by the Swedish manufacturer in the Torslanda factory to produce the new electric SUV Volvo EX60. Carat 840 presses are used by Volvo to create the rear floor of the EX60 body, molding a single large piece to replace a hundred small and very small components.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
