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Car manufacturing revolutionized with Gigapresses

Over sixty components replaced by single module giant die cast, cutting costs and simplifying car manufacturing

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Travagliato Italy (Global News)_In these days of recessions, high inflation and disposable income seeing a nosedive, car makers are probably facing their worst years in history. Hence, they are looking inward at cutting costs in manufacturing to set off some of the downturns they envisage in the short to medium term.  Enter Gigapresses – a giant die cast that replaces about sixty welded components and shapes it into a single module gigantic aluminium die casting machine.

Tesla supplier IDRA Group, headquartered in Travagliaot in Italy, are in the forefront of helping car manufacturers cut costs by upto 40 percent and simplify manufacturing.  Tesla has been a gigapress pioneer using massive die casting machines that make large single pieces for a vehicle’s undercarriage for quicker, economical manufacturing process. But not just that – these gigapresses streamline production and reduce work, even in instances where robots are being used, making Tesla the most profitable battery-electric vehicle (BEV) maker.

However, the downside to the vehicle’s underside is that it poses quality and flexibility risks because one flaw could compromise the entire module, making fixing more difficult. But profit margins have to be maintained despite raw material prices surging and shareholders demanding their pound of flesh.  Carmakers including Toyota, General Motors, Volvo, Hyundai and Chinese EV Nio are scrambling to thin manufacturing costs and gigapresses might be just the answer.

IDRA was acquired by Chinese group LK industries in 2008 and has been developing gigapresses since 2016 but there are more of the likes of IDRA on the market.  There’s Europe’s Buhler Group, Ube Corp and Shibaura Machine Japan, Yisum and Haitian in China, all working on the concept of popularizing gigapresses so the trickle down impact will be positive for the entire vehicle industry.

The Tesla cybertruck manufacturing plant in Texas
 

AlixPartners analyses that globally right now, the gigapress industry is just USD 73 billion and is projected to top USD 126 billion in 2032. Aluminium has the distinct advantage of being lightweight and is used for other car componenets as well including engines, with the average metal content in European cars for example increasing from 179 kilograms, that’s 20 percent in 2019 to an envisaged 200 kilograms by 2025.

With battery packs costing about 25 to 40 per cent of the total cost of a BEV, automakers have begun using aluminium casting machines to reduce investment infused into building chassis, which is the second most expensive cost component at a significant 40 per cent.

IDRA’s newest and biggest gigapress is the Gigapress 9000, the size of a small house and has a clamping force of over 9,000 tons. Gigapress 9000 is now being used to manufacture Tesla’s new cybertruck. Tesla has embraced gigapresses with much enthusiasm, employing these in all its facilities.  In the Gruenheide facility for example, a model Y is manufactured in just ten hours, about three times faster than EVs built by competitors.

The expectation is that at least 80 per cent of automakers will be using gigapresses by 2035 but the larger the gigapress, the larger the risks that could arise.  This is what Volkswagen and BMW from employing gigapresses in its car making process, as the belief is that fixing design flaws with a body made of several small parts is easier than fixing flaws embedded in a single module. 

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