Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post: The Beauty of Hand Manufacturing Continue reading the Original Blog Post
I can identify with this. It takes me almost a complete day to finish a set of my taillights. See my link below. I love that pic of the worker with the rings around his arms. .
This may be too far OT, but it's impressive as well as scary. http://www.youtube.com/embed/8_lfxPI5ObM?rel=0
As well, I would have never of thought that the housing would see double stamping(pic' 1 to pic' 2). Guess it makes sense, less metal fatigue?
Having spent most of my working life in manufacturing, I look at all these pretty videos of robots doing their moves to perfection, then realize what happens when one little wire somewhere gets over worked and breaks. Hopefully everything goes into Emergency Stop and no robots get pulled out of the floor and assembled into a car body. Kudos to the electricians, hydraulics and pneumatics guys that can trouble shoot and keep this mess running!
It actually looks like the bucket is spun into it's rough shape, stamped into the final shape, then goes through a second spinning operation at some point to make the lip for the trim ring. (check the tooling on the lathe in the later pic)
The Telsa S is the modern day Model T. I want one for a cruiser, but completely impractical. Probably 10 years too soon.
Its sad that the era of craftsmanship and hand made product is over, but it makes the hand made parts all the more precious.
Handmade mainstream products...sure, it's mostly over. But handcrafted niche products are thriving again....it's all good. As technology improves, general merchandise becomes more and more automated.
The auto manufacturing industry in Australia has taken a beating lately with GM and Ford bailing out in 2016. All those skills and flow on benefits to other smaller component suppliers are going to be lost, without manufacturing industries we are going to be stuffed when our export resources dry up. I love seeing these kind of pics as it makes me realise why I enjoy building hot rods and customs using these old hand made parts, as Robert Williams said, you can feel the soul of those parts.
Except for the clothes, those guys could have been making coke machines at Vendo, circa 1994. Our plant was nearly that antiquated. We had some CNC machines, but mostly we had guys bending, punching and painting metal, and women wiring and installing the lights, motors and controls.
Love these industrial photos. They beat the cra* out of any fashion mess in the world. I've seen a lot from refineries that should be in the finest art shows!
Very cool photos but not really hand made. Manufactured in an old school way using high tech machines of the day. The lights look spun to me. This is something that is hand made. Coachbuilt fenders... David
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