r/machinesinaction • u/Bodzio1981 • 13d ago

Car Factory Robots

Automatic Welding Body Shop, will we lost out jobs some day?

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u/The_Demosthenes_1 13d ago

So the big deal with the Tesla Giga press is they avoid this step right?  Or minimize it substantially is what I understand.  But maybe I'm totally mistaken 

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u/herpafilter 13d ago

That's about right. These unibodies are being built from hundreds of smaller sheet metal pressings. All those parts get spot welded together by these kinds of robots. By the end of the line you have a complete car body.

Castings basically replace large sections of the front and rear of that weldment with a handful of big aluminum parts. The goal is to steadily increase the size and/or number of castings as replacements for sheet metal.

There's still a fair amount of robotic assembly. The cast parts are big heavy things, so robots move them around the factory. They come out of the mold needing holes cut and flashing trimmed, so robots do that with laser or plasma torches. They need to be mated with the rest of the unibody, and that's done with a combination of welds, fasteners and probably adhesives, all done with automation. It's just a lot faster/cheaper/lighter because there are fewer parts involved.