What is the largest machine you have ever seen? If you were a Tesla factory staff,
chances are it is a Giga Press, Tesla’s latest and biggest weapon to dominate the
electric vehicle manufacturing landscape! What is a Giga Press, and how does it allow
Tesla to crush the competition?
Join us as we dig into this massive machine as the Tesla Giga Press is finally here!
Traditional auto manufacturers have been making cars for a century, but none of them
has been able to dream and think as big as Tesla! Not content with the status quo,
Tesla is changing how vehicles are made!
When a non-Tesla automaker makes a car, it will do so by welding, fastening, and
bolting a maddening array of parts together to make the chassis. This process has
many disadvantages. For example, the automaker has to keep an extensive inventory
of parts, keep up with myriads of suppliers, and require massive space to do their
production.
However, Tesla has found a far better way with the use of the Giga Press. A Giga Press
is used to make a large component in a single piece.
To be able to do this, the Giga Press is big and heavy! Its physical footprint is
formidable, at 20 meters long, 7.5 meters wide, and 6 meters high! It will swallow some
houses!
This machine weighs a whopping 430 tons or the size of five Space Shuttle. To
transport a single Giga Press, you will need up to 24 flatbed trucks!
How does a Giga Press work?
The Giga Press makes car components by die casting. This means the machine forces
a large amount of molten material into a mold through a plunger. With what Tesla ants
to achieve, the Giga Press has to produce lots of force, and the Giga Press is capable
of an insane 5,500 tons of force!
The metal to be injected into the mold is melted in a separate furnace. The alloy Tesla
uses melts at around 850 degrees Celsius before the plunger pushes it into the mold,
after which the mold is open after cooling down to about 400 degrees Celsius. The car
chassis is then plunged into a pool of water to cool down to 50 degrees Celsius.
If you think this is a simple process, consider the scale at which it happens! About 100
kg of aluminum is forced into the die cavity in between 60 and 100 milliseconds!
Since Tesla does not produce the Giga Press, where does the beast come from?
The company building the Giga Press is IDRA in Italy. IDRA focuses on powerful and
sophisticated machines for demanding markets such as the automotive industry. It was
the first company to build machines for structural elements, according to its website.
Tesla has been using the Giga Press to make the Model Y, and while only the rear end
of the chassis comes from this monster, it has allowed Tesla to handle only one piece
instead of more than 70 parts! The company plans to make the front end of the chassis
from the Giga Press too, and after it starts making structural batteries, the Giga Press
will extend to making the battery packs. By that time, Tesla would have eliminated about
370 parts!
Not only that, as the Giga Press allows Tesla to make better, stronger cars. Since
nobody is welding or riveting, the risk of a misaligned body is non-existent.
The Giga Press fits into Tesla’s plan for several reasons.
Most of Musk’s fans know how fanatic he is about saving costs and the Giga Press
helps him do that on several fronts! Remember how large the Giga Press is? Turns out
it will help Tesla reduce the size of its body shop by a whopping 30 percent! So Tesla
can fit in more production in the same facility. The cost of maintaining the plant goes
down as well!
Tesla won’t need as much staff either, as there are fewer welding and bolting to do!
Nobody likes to lose their jobs, but it happens. Some sources claim labor costs go down
by as much as 20 percent
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