In the latest episode of Munro Live, Sandy Munro visits IDRA's facilities in Italy, where IDRA produces die-casting machines of unprecedented scale.
The company's offer includes an entire lineup of heavy equipment, from several thousand tontons to 9,000-ton giga presses.
Die casting machines can produce complex parts by forcing molten metal under high pressure into a mold cavity. They are expensive (especially at the size that we see at IDRA), but become profitable when used for high-volume production. Tesla uses those to produce single-piece front or rear sections of the car (mega castings).
The assembly of the largest IDRA machine has been recently teased ahead of its supposed deployment at the Tesla Giga Texas plant, where it's expected to produce parts for the Tesla Cybertruck.
According to the video, Sandy Munro appears to be truly amazed by IDRA's machinery and he praised some of the solutions when a particular element is used for 2-3 tasks.
IDRA has already delivered multiple die casting machines for Tesla. Demand from the automotive industry for this type of equipment is currently growing, as more and more manufacturers would like to use larger and more complex parts to simplify the assembly of vehicles. For example, earlier this year Volvo announced the mega-casting of aluminum body parts for its next-generation models.
If the 9,000-ton giga press is envisioned for the Tesla Cybertruck, we wonder how high it might go, especially since Tesla is engaged also in bigger vehicles like the Semi truck.
Some suggest that a 12,000 ton unit is under development for the full body casting of a car. The production of a vehicle would then partially remind us of the production of a toy car.
Well, at some point (when all parts are produced this way), the potential of the production improvement will end and the manufacturers will have to look elsewhere for another breakthrough.
Before that happens, we will probably see a massive rush for die casting machines for the automotive industry. Actually, there were already multiple reports about that in China.
