Hans and Franz playing with their engine making robots

[halboyles]

Look Ma!  No helmets, no safety glasses,...

 

 

[Mike Self]

Great video--much newer than when M10 blocks were produced.  These are aluminum and six cylinder--and way more automation here then there would have been in the 60s.   Those workers don't seem to be very well protected considering how hot all that metal is--especially the forklift operator when that molten aluminum is being poured into a second flask...

 

mike

[irdave]

It looked like the two machines polishing the head were having a race.  The one on the left,"I'm done!"  The one on the right resigned to finish second...

[02Les]

Safety! Having worked with Aluminium I know what an ounce of water dropped on molten aluminium can do. Disastrous.

[TobyB]

It's a uniquely American approach to safety- put a $2.95 hard hat on, and some 95c safety glasses,

and maybe a $4.95 'conspicuity' vest- oh, and steel toed boots- and you're SAFE!!!

 

These are pretty controlled circumstances (in about the year 2000, from the parts they're making)

in a large factory.  Without US liability lawyervultures circling.  So I'd venture that the safety precautions in place

are pretty good.  And they may have been circumvented for filming, too.

 

t

safe is smart, not 'one size fits all'

[1972_Targa]

Shades of the old lost wax casting method. What are they using for forms here? Looks to be some type of encased sand?

 

In the early 1990s I worked on marketing brochures for GM's Saturn (RIP). The plant in Spring Hill, TN used styrofoam for the block forms. Cast iron cylinder sleeves were inserted into the aluminum blocks to avoid the whole Vega thing. Good times.

[02Les]

1 hour ago, TobyB said:

It's a uniquely American approach to safety- put a $2.95 hard hat on, and some 95c safety glasses,

and maybe a $4.95 'conspicuity' vest- oh, and steel toed boots- and you're SAFE!!!

 

These are pretty controlled circumstances (in about the year 2000, from the parts they're making)

in a large factory.  Without US liability lawyervultures circling.  So I'd venture that the safety precautions in place

are pretty good.  And they may have been circumvented for filming, too.

 

t

safe is smart, not 'one size fits all'

 

The "CYA" effect.

[jimk]

I see they repurposed a 2002 timing chain to lift the cask on the fork truck ?

[Son of Marty]

Originally it was a mixture of damp sand and clay, now days i'm sure it more ceramics and a binder of some sort, after the individual part mold is packed with "sand" it's baked into shape and placed into the master mold for casting. After it's cast and cleaned off the castings it's reground back to powder and reused over and over. Pretty much the same way you did it in 10 th grade metal shop only a bit more automated.

[TobyB]

Yeah, but the positive has gone to a 'lost' material- the M54 engine shows clear marks

of polystyrene beads, just like the Saturn parts.

 

It's harder to form up the casting negative ('highly developed clay sand') but then there's

no mold shift, collapse, or need to remove the positive.  And like 3d printing, now there

are a LOT more shapes that can be made out of cast material.  

 

It's probably the biggest single advance in casting.

 

t

thinks it's pretty cool, too.