Yesterday morning we got a telephone call from the foundry people, the owner was not avialable, Called away for an emergency…. so bummer, we stayed in the hotel and worked on our computers, we don’t picture this as that’s no fun… Kevin picked us up little before noon for a brief lunch….
On the parking lot we’ve got some Chinese for beginners….
The lunch was something traditional, and tasty as well, only ordering was quiet a challenge… Thanks God we had pictures… and Kevin…
Basic, very basic, some sesam seed we had to stamp ourselves, cool, at least we had something to do…. and mandatory Chinese Tea….
Ok enough about food, back to work… Early afternoon we had an appointment with a local car hero and artist alike… Besides our external quality controls we always try to find local people who knows cars in and out, who breath our brands, know how to wrench and are self containing enough to just give their straight idea’s (that describe Pascal in BBT office perfectly!) ok that these guys don’t live in the most organised places you have to take along….
Welcome, welcome…
Daily transport, a VW bus look-a-like, aren’t they cute?
Beside VW’s this guy has tons of Mini’s… we liked this psychedelic one….
His little shop is a collection of automotive, scale toys, and everything with a “interesting smell”… kind a cool hang out place…
His main thing is being an artist, making robot statues from old car parts…
Find the Voodoo and the Horse with the burning tail….
Flamingo? or Ostrich? look at the toes…
Another weird creature… A mini with beetle engine conversion, the first good mini on the Globe? Or just another movie car for Mr Bean…
Some more creatures, a bird….
And a Dog…
After all creativity and to learn our Mr Tester in person, we headed more North for an early dinner with some larger traders we work with for a while, it was good to learn Mr Benjamin in person, and we talked a lot, huge manufacturer of modern car parts, but still a weak heart for what him started to grow, the VW beetle parts… Definitely a guy with his heart in the right place… one of our buddies for live…
Heading more North to the Capital of Taipei… Crazy traffic on a rainy (and COLD!) Friday evening in rush hour, but still I managed to get you this shot about the typical Asian neon signs…
If you ever been to Taipei you remember the scooters, they’re just EVERYWHERE! unbelievable, they’ve hoards of them…
After three days with Kevin we had to say Goodbye, and this way we like to extremely thank Kevin so much! He was the perfect host and made this trip one of our most easy trips ever so far….
Today we will be back in time, and been guided by our first and most important Taiwanese business partner Mike, but first after all this travel, meeting and visits….
See you at the bar!
Day two was as busy as day one, another 4 factories and loads of discussions, it all started in the morning with a pressing plant that is specialized in smaller parts for window mechanisms, latches, hinges, brackets and the like…
Single operation presses line up, plus a deep throat press, together with the plasma cutter its the basic lay out of any press shop…
One of our toolings, the plasma cutting jig and sample for our battery cover project, the battery covers are ready and will be shipped in January, another new BBT product for the vintage crowd!
As said this shop is heavily specialized in smaller parts, many times more heavy, window winders, brackets, latches, hinges you name it they make it… only for Classic cars! Our guide Kevin reveals us many many secrets about production methods…
But no time to loose, up to the next…. down the road in Taiwan, you see many Buddha temples, its always difficult to take a picture from the back seat, but here I tried real hard to share at least something with you….
Next stop is a polishing shop….
Chrome plants don’t understand Classic cars, so a private polishing shop is a must to use when you want to reach certain qualities… These guys make 20 to 30% more salary as the average worker in Taiwan, but they need to be dedicated… and we are witnesses, yes they do, perfect job!
From the polishing shop it was just around the corner to the first paint shop… here we learned a lot about the electrolysis friendly new primer… shall the next production BBT sheet metal also arrive in this silver? ready to weld? Its something we will discuss internal BBT for sure… nice coating, ready to weld (no need to grind down) and ready to paint, as its holding fairly well….
In this process you see we’re really looking for companies with small production series… no need to produce 3 or 500 pieces anymore, techniques today make smaller series affordable as well, all you need is the right engineer… our GT is perfect for this!
Time for lunch, this looked like a perfect cafe to stop by! It’s a share holder of the pressing works as well…
One of the new things from the pressing company, dinner cafe furniture, all you see is real steel!
So let’s try out…. We must admit it was very good and comfortable…. Interested in one of those? Just let me know, I can supply… but all steel is not all cheap… remember, you buy a half of a car!
In this mountain area resort the garden was beautiful, wowh…
Sad about the grey cold weather…
But when we see palm tree’s we do think the sun along for free…
OK, enough relaxed and lunched and enjoyed, back to work…
Next stop was the pressing works HQ… another 1000 ton press!
And another bunch of plasma cutters, standard equipment remember?
Half finished products, lots of stamping need several stages to get finished, for a rear quarter like this its mainly 3 or 4 stages, but sometimes its up to 6 or 7…. and every stage require its own proper set of toolings…
Single operation press line up, pretty impressive huh?
This is a 2D plasma cutter at work…
Yes I do look happy, another almost finished project, vent wing assembly for bay window, the vent wing itself will be available soon, the entire assembly will wait a while, but is also in final stage of development! Here we do last discussions, for BBT its mainly to tell we don’t want compromises, only the exact same part like the original, or even better where possible!
Some more preparation and investigation… Very dedicated engineers at work, the son of the owner, and the production manager….we talk straight to decision makers of production!
Alain is checking out the details on some parts, we have to know possibilities…
Believe it or not, this state of the art workshop is nothing more as the tooling inspection and final adjustment shop! A dream for mechanical engineering!
Here it is, our T25/T3 vanagon, for reversed engineering… a real model to fit parts in the factory yes, absolutely necessary, we go far and beyond to make what our cars need, and with this we leave competition behind…. far behind, nobody in VW industry is doing what BBT does, not even close… we can assure you… we have another three cars on the way over…. are we crazy? Yes! but we do feel good…
After some real boring business meetings it was time for dinner, we’ve been treated well, with my personal favorite Asian dinner style, Tepanyaki… The real thing….
Tuna with fresh seasonal salad, yammie…
Seems somebody was aware from my upcoming Birthday, you never can start celebrate early enough! Thanks Kevin, you pay a lot of attention to your customer…
Another busy day didn’t need a lot to let us sleep for a good nights rest, while you read this on Friday, we’re visiting the foundry and a roll forming company, so stay tuned, we try to bring another update full of travel experience tomorrow….
Oh yes, who said this was “Holiday”? Factory visits for 12 hrs a day is harsh, believe me… makes you tired… but do we want to miss it? Not a split second of it, we make better parts, and learn about production, so necessary to bring the right parts to the market…. So yes, this is as much holiday to us as the beach to many, actually we have every day holiday, as we work with passion… beat this…
More of this tomorrow…
Alain and me arrived here day before yesterday after a very easy but very long flight…. after a night of necessary sleep yesterday the real work could start… nicely scheduled as every trip, we’re fully booked… day 1 was a good start, no less as five factory visits, together with our engineer GT, and guide Kevin…
First stop was a factory that make our Styrofoam and plaster models,
Looks real, but is Styrofoam, this Styrofoam goes to the foundry (visit on Friday) and will be put in a container, with sand around, the melted metal will be poured in and “burn” the Styrofoam and take its place, and form the mold like that, but as said more on Friday over that process… Anyway, we saw a lot of skilled workers, as plaster and Styrofoam is special guild for sure!
Alain discussing with Kevin…. I took Alain in several pictures as a height reference… so you get an idea of sizes…
A plaster mold for the inner fender of a Porsche 911, not our project sadly enough…
Next stop, Milling shop nr 1… After foundry the molds have first to be milled, and then trimmed, polished and dialed in… We start to understand why a tooling process takes so much time…
Because of molds are so huge, the machines are even more impressive, milling machines that you can “walk into”…
A part ready for three D scanning, mainly this scanning is used as reference, and also for the plasma cutters at the end of the process, small series take huge advantage from plasma cutters instead of cutting tools…. Btw. did you reconise the part? Rear wheel arch for the T25/T3 Vanagon… Another BBT project for the near future, toolings are in the make!
Milling factory nr 2, the machines are only getting bigger!
A two man operated CNC milling machine…. crazy…
Toolings, toolings, and every time we learn new things, Kevin is really taking good care for us!
Crazy big… Milling is an important process, CNC technology helps a lot! imagine in the early days, all by hand….!!
On the road to the next stop, always something to see in a foreign country, Taiwan is a very busy country, many factories, large, small and everybody is busy, I think they have good economy… But the typical Far East scenery stays…
We thought this was fun, an outlet for Budha temples, you just buy them pre-build, in the size you wish… Taiwan is mainly Budhist religion…
Next stop was first stamping factory (they have four!) huge 1000 ton presses, but also smaller ones… to build car parts, you need material and tools…
Another press in another factory, we had to move fast, 5 factories in one day….. this was 500 tons…
And a couple of smaller single operation presses, mainly for brackets and the like…
All toolings are trimmed by hand, some guys take the job very seriously, like this guy… After this the press surface is really polished completely by hand, before the mold is “dialed in” on a press… A long process, and always something going on….
Dialing in of a new part on a plasma cutter, yes they’re huge too!
Last stop for the day, one of the two major pressing works, watch the amount of tooling! Only for classic cars! Can you imagine how many tons of steels?
Another huge press! wowh! watch Alain again as a reference…
And three smaller presses for the smaller parts… state of the art machinery!
Here we discussed the final steps for our rear valence for the beetle, its the final steps before production, finally a valence that will fit! We found three mistakes, so the trip is worth already and we’re only day one! Yes, we took a NOS one as a model to start from, the best part needs a good base….
Here the plaster tool… if you thought a real valence was simple to make, use your hammer, our tooling is over 6 months in development now… and will provide state of the art spare part, as our cars deserve!
After a harsh day of work, let’s go the restaurant, in the Far East fresh food is very very important! Choose your fish, and crab, and oyster, lobster you name it, it’s all alive and ready for your consumption, a different way, but at least we’ll know what we’re eating…
Thanks GT, we learned a lot today, and looking further to the next two days in your company….
Type 1 model
Type 2 model t1
Combi Brasil
Combi T2a
Combi T2b
Type 2 model t25
Type watercooled
Combi T4
Type 1 model Ghia
Karmann Ghia 34
Type 3 model
Type 4 model
Type 181
Porsche
Golf
AA performance
AMC
Ate
Auto Craft
BBT Original
Produced by BBT
Bugpack
Buttys bits
CB performance
Engle
Febi
Flat 4
IGP
Kolbenschmidt
Mahle
OCAP
OMC
Provided by BBT
BBT Quality
Promotions
Rancho
Rhibo
Silver Weld Through
Silverline
Sintermetal
Scat
TRW
Vintage Speed
VW Sunroofs
Wolfsburg West