Interesting, but then surprisingly boring after about 2-1/2 seconds. I find it more interesting holding actual, real old parts and thinking about the history stored in them. For me, the new stuff like this is awesome for other things in my life, but not when it comes to old cars. I much prefer actual old stuff, not new stuff that just looks old.
There is great potential in this technology for the old car world. Reproduction and replacement sheet metal for pre-72 cars is not as affordable or available or accurate as it should be, due mainly to the huge investment required in dies and tooling. This could fix that.
The dies are the killer cost-wise. And a big enough press to accomodate the operation. All you need to do is digitize a "golden" body panel and create the CAD model. Make the 1st piece in 1/4 scale to shake out the major bugs. Still a considerable initial investment to get it going. The boon is that it can run unattended as a "lights out" process. Smaller parts can be nested into a single panel and then broken out later. A bigger part like a fender or hood may take a full day to process, which will get faster as the technology progresses. Bob
It's a pair of CNC gantry mills, one running directly above the other. The tooling is probably a carbide ball, top and bottom. The software generates a code for one of the machines. The code for the other machine might be the same except with the +- signs reversed. This is not hard to do or really very expensive, less than the cost of a Yoder. I'd still rather have the Yoder.
I'm disappointed. I just looked in the Homemade Tools and Equipment thread and no one has garage-built one of these things yet.
I worked at a manufacturing plant for automotive parts as a manuf./production/quality engineer. Just for seat rails for new cars they needed a 700 ton Schuler press (this thing is like 2-3 stories tall). Lets not forget the tooling for the press, not just the dies, but the uncoiler, leveler, etc. Just for a new die you are looking at $20,000-30,000. This crap is expensive. This is definitely a game changer, but really doesn't look too complicated. BTW my manager (zero mechanical and electrical abilities) didn't know a thing about engineering, he was designing these dies, but guessing on how they should be made instead of using math. If the part was being made funky he would change the die design rather than troubleshooting the problem with the press... which 90% of the time was because sludge was hanging up the pins for the press due to lack of maintenance, thus causing it to walk down funky and making the part out of spec.. He got several of these dies wrong, wasting more than $100,000, then tried to blame me because I didn't do the math. I put my two weeks in and never looked back. These are the people we are dealing with when new vehicles are being made and a large reason why they are so expensive... because of all the idiots. Give me an old car any day, at least I can work on it myself, the parts are cheap, and they look better.
someday speedway motors will get a call for a fender, it will get processed, payment accepted.. that will send a trigger to the machine and it will get built real time. no need for extra inventory. parts built to need. that is a huge savings.
But that would collapse every reason for it to be Speedway doing it. I see two or three reputable shops in every major town where there is an enthusiast base, each comprising ten people or less. Reputations would become a lot more important: everyone would need to know who they can trust - which is where forums like the HAMB come in. Remember, there is a lot besides old car parts these shops can make, they wouldn't be relying only on us. The better they can handle flexibility and individual requirements, management-wise, the more profitable they would be.
I really doubt mass produced stuff would be created with this process. However, for prototyping, it'd be a huge leap. So maybe china will start banging out non-wonky panels. Or maybe someone won't maintain the presses like '59 apache was saying and they'd still be selling ill-fitting stuff.
Quote: Originally Posted by Boones someday speedway motors will get a call for a fender, it will get processed, payment accepted.. that will send a trigger to the machine and it will get built real time. no need for extra inventory. parts built to need. that is a huge savings. Interesting thought and good point on the followup - if this were ever to become a way to order or get parts the thing to have/own would be the CAD files. There is another argument on who gets the rights to those
A 3D pantograph type input would seem probable to define the movements, eliminating the autocad. You would just need a part to trace.
As long as a good solid modeler/CAD guy has something to pull dimensions from, CAD files can be made. I did PRO-E professionally for ten years. With access to a decent enough set of software tools, someone like me or someone who knows someone like me can get the job done. ...or that. Laser scanning is also an option, but they're tens of thousands of dollars still.
How long have lazers been around? Now try to get a guy in your town to lazer cut a one off part without 14 rounds of grabass. Keep dreaming.
For repro parts there would be all kinds of files floating about the 'net; the only difference would be that some would be accurate and some would be crap. If you know the difference there's no reason to pay money for what you can get for free.
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