Yesterday we visited the foundry of our trusty cylinderhead and engine case supplier Auto Linea. BBT and Auto Linea go a long way back now!
We visited their aluminum foundry, and again, this was an impressive operation!
These are some samples of products Auto Linea cast in this plant. In total Auto Linea has 4 plants..
Let’s start with the raw material, comes in like this..
and is severe tested, also with a spectrometer before it goes in to their storage… also the liquid aluminum from the foundry is tested in this lab…
Let’s start with the cylinderheads first..
This is the machine, or one of the machines to be more precisely, that make the insert sand castings.
These are those castings! Yes, its sand!! Unbelievable how nice they can form this! Do You recognise in and outlet ports?
Ok the (aluminum) soup is cooking… ready for action!!
They put the sand casting in the steel (outer) tooling and close the tooling on this machine…
and they “serve” the hot (aluminum) soup!
What they pour in the tooling…
When they re-open the tooling they get something like this…
Off course there’s massive differences in tooling, left You see an export cylinder head (like we sell) and on the right you see a way cheaper cylinderhead for the Brazilian domestic market!
The better the tooling, the better the product…
The first batch of the new tooling arrived @ BBT HQ just before we left, so anytime soon You can read on this Blog about the new Cylinderhead that’s way better as the old one…
The “cleaning” happens here before shipping the head to another plant for machining a mere 250km up north…
In the next building we could follow the process of the foundry for the engine cases.
They been made in a different way what called “a cold box”…
These are the forms…
That been filled with sand…
Very special sand that becomes hard when they spray it with a certain gas… this is how the open sand castings look… before they close them…
The (aluminum) soup is also here cooking… time to pour it in the moulds…
and this is how it comes out of the moulds… half an engine case at the time…
after that they been shot blasted for 15 minutes in this huge machine, with stainless steel bullets…
and finally they get sorted and stored in the transport boxes to be transported up North for machining…
on the way out we spotted this TL right before the factory door…:)
The aluminum foundry of Auto Linea is in a city called Blumenau… it’s a very Germanized city and they have the second largest Oktoberfest in the entire world. this is where the Auto Linea export team brought us for lunch…
Just wanted to share with all of You this little old German town…
Jerry seems to like serious German food…:)
and as many beers on tap as You can dream off, no, we didn’t tried them all…
For the sweeties between all of you, these was the desert buffet…:)
yes, the food is very good in Brazil…
The afternoon we had a harsh 5 hr trip up north to the city of Curitiba, we faced quiet some heavy tropical rainstorms what delayed our travel time enormously… but we did arrive safe and and sound, ready for the next…
Tomorrow we report about the machining plant of Auto Linea, been there before, but its is a massive operation I don’t mind visiting every Brazilian trip.. also to discuss production, new products and quality issues… so… stay tuned
Yesterday Jerry and I visited a brake drum and a rubber factory in Brazil
The brake drum factory was quiet impressive as they did their own casting…
They start from scrap and ore and melt it down in kettles…
1200°Celsius… pretty hot!
To being poured in distribution kettles… this is liquid metal!
The big distribution kettle pour anothertime in smaller melting kettles…
Driving around with kettles with liquid metal… weird job they do here…:)
These kettles been pouring the liquid metal into the sand castings…
whereafter the castings going through a tunnel to “distress”…
Same time on the other side they form the sand castings…
After the distress of the castings they been send through enormous tumblers to break the sand casting…and free the new born casted drum…
All metal is severe controlled on quality continuously throughout the whole process.. hardness, structure, graphite quotation, it’s all very closely followed up… here we see our friend Cartlos at the Spectro meter to determine the structure and exact composition of the (liquid) metal. To give You an idea all steel is at least controlled twice before they pour it!
With these raw castings as a result…
No less as 38 CNC machines take it from here to transform the raw castings into high-end brake drum and discs…
Very small series been still drilled the “conventional” way…
But most been fully CNC machined… a production of close to a million pieces a month!!
Outside it was pouring rain (and hail!!) welcome to the summer in Brazil!
Next was a rubber factory… window and door seals…
This is the components “mixer”! Very impressive!
And the rollers, to make the base rubber for the extruder…
To get the rubber to the extruders…
And this was the molding machines where they make the Beetle door and hood seals!
What a day!! Another set of lessons about the production from the spare parts for our beloved Volkswagens…
This Volkswagen Gol was waiting us to bring to next city of Blumenau
Tomorrow we visit and aluminum foundry… so stay tuned!
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