Ive always wondered how much it actually costs brookeville to stamp out a 32' body including all labor time, utilities and steel. Probabaly would be impossible to answer but still i think its a good question just to ponder!
Are you thinking about opening shop and doing some stamping? Just thought it was a question to ponder
The actual cost to stamp a body is probably pretty low. What you are paying for is the millions in development & tooling costs that it took them to get to a point to where they could actually produce a saleable product.
Haha, I wish I could be able to do that but just the equipment alone to accomplish this task would be enormous. Millions of dollars in cad development to get the pefect dimensions for the dies to stamp it! I think ill stick to the old hammer and dolly but it would be so f'in nice to pop out a fresh '32 whenever i wanted to!
Well, what's their retail price? I don't know about their '32 program, but I've heard their tooling costs for their '33-'34 is north of two million dollars! When you stop to figger how many people in the world today are actually in the market for a new '32-'33'-'34 Ford body and could cover the actual cost, you gotta figger the market isn't that big. If that investment captial was borrowed money,yikes! You can damn well bet that the guy runnin' Brookville's books better know actual unit costs, but makin that public knowledge ain't likely! Swankey Devils C.C. " Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion!''
Hey Phil, getting away from the cost part of the question, how long do the dies last and are there ways to extend die life? do they use lubricants on the sheet metal or are the dies coated with any kind of non stick surfaces ? I also wonder who determines when the dies are worn out and are the dies destroyed or can they be rebuilt? I remember reading about a super slippery stuff that an engine builder was using on parts that was so slick that it wasn't turning the lifters in the lifter bores and the lifters were still holding up
The dies are most likely kirksite, maybe with some tool steel insterts for high stress / high definition areas like the body lines . Kirksite is hard enough to stamp parts but much softer and cheaper than tool steel. Kirksite is poured into a mold of the final component shape then fine tuned by hand to create the final die. The dies can not be hit as hard as tool steel, so the forming process is much slower. Lots of lubricant is used to prolong die life. When I was playing with chassis stampings, a kirksite tool would last from 100 - 300 parts, depending on the complexity, where a tool steel could make 10's of thousands before it needed freshening. Keep in mind that I was making crossmembers and such from 3-4 mm thick steel vs the thin sheet of a body skin. After the dies have been worked beyond limits, the kirksite is recycled / melted down to pour the next die. Back in the late 90's all the prototype shops around Detroit were booming and there was a shortage of kirksite. Some of my tools for a prototype vehicle were stored outside (in a fenced area) with other tooling after we had built our first batch of parts. Went to get the tooling for the second batch and found my tooling, and a whole lot more missing. Not sure how, but they think someone had a boom truck and would just go over the fence and grab what they wanted. Sure put me in a bind .
What Billybobdad said. The cash cost of manufacture is probably less than $2000 (guess) what is new, deep draw, high quality steel sheet going for nowdays? The biggie is development and tooling, and history is littered with people that tried to develop and market a good idea, and failed.
Weigh a finished body, add maybe 20% for scrap, to get the direct material cost. Now add a few hours for assembly, a few more for stamping and set up, multiply by X a decent wage. Figure in depreciation on tooling and equipment. Then add Workers Compensation premiums, employee benefits, assorted taxes, advertising and promotion, etc. If you could sell, lets say, 1000 bodies a year, then add 1/1000 x the cost of the building (insurance, taxes, maintenance, electricity, heat, water, etc.) Now add return on investment, and profit. You COULD say it "costs" less than $X000 to make a body. But to get into a position to make them, will cost you BIG money. Don't worry, the Taiwanese will be making them soon.
Too late. They already make complete first generation Camaro shells. I've heard they also have complete Mustang and 'Cuda shells. All very thin, and poorly fitting. They only thing stopping them from making ANYTHING, is a sample to copy and someone to pay for tooling.
That will happen, one way or another. Between outsourcing, and red tape. The decline in the number of foundries in North America is shocking. Same deal with tool & die, and cnc shops. 2 years ago, 80% of the machine shops in Windsor had closed. And it hasn't got any better. Our local paper has a section on Sundays, listing industrial auctions. 2/3 of them are machine shops, mold making, tool & Die, and stamping. Thank you Wallmart.
One thing that irritates me a bit is that the 32 costs twice as much as the Model A. Look at the two bodies, there might be 5% more steel in the 32 and a few more compound curves, but I think it has more to do with original bodies being worth more, hence the new body costs more just cuz it's 32.
I used to get parts stamped for work. Most dies for lawnmower chassis, etc. are tool steel and polished like a mirror. Stamping is a few a minute, so no real time there. And no one buys new presses so not a lot of money. Parts were only a couple bucks a hit with our dies and mat'l. No lube on our stuff. But our new deep drawn stuff gets lube. Our parts weren't critical, so took a few thousand hits for 1/4" die wear stamping 3/8" material.
In the back on my mind I seem to remember reading some story of low-cost alloy for making the dies cheaper, but not as long lasting. Of course the R&D, CAD, and prototype costs to make any thing of good quality could chew up a lot of investment money. If the Brookville guys are smart they are pricingtheir product right at the point where a new entrant into the market would have to think that it's not quite worth it to compete with them. I want to say the article said zinc, but in my thinking it would just be too soft to move steel.
Good. 32's SHOULD be a bit harder to get when you consider the total number of A's built compared to the 32! They make some extra money...thats good to! They might stay in business!!!!
...and, don't forget about the big ass mutha of a press that stamps that stuff. You are talking about a press that is probably at least two stories tall. Watch your fingers, -Abone.
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/060405.html "The Kirksite dies are good, he says, for 800 to 1,000 hits."
I recall reading about the first company that repro'd the 32 Ford fenders decades ago.....they had to schedule a time slot with Boeing Aircraft to rent their 600 ton press.
I saw one press that was used for serious stamping.It was 7 stories tall! The guy had to buy the building just to get the press.
I read in an article that the 32 has more parts, the parts have deeper draws, and it's harder to assemble properly. I'd imagine that they should have some jigs by now, but from what I've seen and read, they are hand fitted in a lot of places.
I made replacement body panels in Detroit for several years. My stamping source gave me six months to pay them for the Kirksite dies.(Just the form made off of NOS parts I supplied them, they retained ownership of the Kirksite material itself) Well, things went fine,until one of my distributors conspired to provide parts and market input to a Taiwan stamping company. The bottom line is that they put me out of business by selling parts so cheaply that I could buy their part painted, packaged, and delivered to Detroit, cheaper than I could buy a raw, untrimmed stamping off my own dies, from across town ! And yes, we had Kirkside dies stolen out of outside storage by thieves too.
To limit the vibration into the ground, the footing should weigh about three times what the moving parts weigh, so a 20' deep footing is not uncommon. As neighborhood grew around him our stamper had to leave doors closed and could only stamp with 1000 ton press in daytime hours.
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