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Automobile Manufacturing, all the new EV's, how is the tooling made?


I would need to see a cost breakdown with real math. I have seen too much misinformation from both sides on the green energy debate. I have actually toured wind farms, mind you it was a dozen years ago or so. I was the most annoying person on the tour, like I was when I toured Boulder Dam asking a mess of technical questions. On the wind farms the issue was the braking systems to keep the blades from spinning too fast. That was where a lot of the maintenance costs were.
 
Same issue with hydro. I asked a small dam operator what happens when a tree takes down the outgoing power line. This hydro plant had three separate systems to close the wickets, close the penstock valve, and some other valve to keep the turbine from going high C. Scary. Same with wind turbines. The load comes off the generator and ...

So a big block of steel is forged and machined to make these dies. I thought I saw some pockets on the sides of one in the video that looked like it was cast. Maybe they machine off unwanted steel to lighten the die? Must be really expensive. Also, I imagine they are weldable to do repairs. What alloy is typically used?
 
So a big block of steel is forged and machined to make these dies.

Big dies are crazy and not many in the US can do them anymore.
Think about loading a 60 to 80,000 pound block of steel onto your mill table. And how do you flip it gently? That is scary.
As far as I know there is no current US source for these, they seem to all come from overseas in Europe.
What do you do with the 20 tons or more of chips? Who shovels that out?
Bob
 
So the large stamping dies I see on the big presses and the giga thing, are they cast steel? I'd like to see a video on how those are made.

When I was a Die maker the Dies were cast iron,fenders hoods,doors,bumpers,real steel bumpers, the plastic "bumpers'
are called facias now, big molds and most molds I touched were
P20,
Gw
 
Well...it's probably a good idea to leave the coal in the ground, aside from the uses it has in non-power generation applications. Which are limited and one day those too will find alternate methods. Burning coal has been a legitimate ecological and humanitarian disaster. Untold millions of deaths every year - probably into the hundreds of millions over its entire history. Of course we didn't have much choice for most of that history, and it's enabled the cushy lives and technology we enjoy today. But as soon as we have the ability to switch off of coal - we should.
 
Untold millions of deaths every year - probably into the hundreds of millions over its entire history.

So all of the heating and cooling and medicinal development, along with the medical facilities and the laboratory facilities were "responsible for untold millions of deaths"?

You need a new way to do you math dude.
 
High food chain fish and some shellfish are sources of mercury which comes from burning fossil fuels that contain mercury with coal being high on the list. I had a small piece of tuna tonight.

Yes, how does one flip over a piece of steel the size of a king bed? So these are CNC machined to shape today, but how were they made before CNC?
 
So all of the heating and cooling and medicinal development, along with the medical facilities and the laboratory facilities were "responsible for untold millions of deaths"?

What a bizarre hot take. Yes, coal has been very useful and responsible for ushering in much of the modern world. Which is exactly what I said.

It's also responsible for all those millions of deaths, which still exist due to the downsides of coal despite other lives elsewhere being saved and enabled by the upsides of coal. They don't cancel out.

The upsides have everything to do with its utility for generating power. The downsides have nothing to do with generating power and everything to do with this particular method of generating power. Yes, burning coal is absurdly harmful in myriad ways, and it's responsible for many premature deaths on account of releasing gargantuan amounts of particulates, heavy metals, radioactive material, and combustion byproducts directly into the atmosphere. Which matters because now we can get the upside without the downside.

Let me verbatim copy/paste my last post since once wasn't enough: "Of course we didn't have much choice for most of that history, and it's enabled the cushy lives and technology we enjoy today. But as soon as we have the ability to switch off of coal - we should." You can argue that the tradeoff was probably worth it, and I would agree, but you can do that and and acknowledge that it's objectively the most harmful power generation method by far. There are now better options for that in developed countries that we should be (and are) moving towards, however slowly. There's a reason China's government is investing heavily into nuclear energy and renewables, and it's not because they're woke tree-huggers.
 
Big dies are crazy and not many in the US can do them anymore.
Think about loading a 60 to 80,000 pound block of steel onto your mill table. And how do you flip it gently? That is scary.
As far as I know there is no current US source for these, they seem to all come from overseas in Europe.
What do you do with the 20 tons or more of chips? Who shovels that out?
Bob

The die shop machines had chip agures,feeding to a main agure in the floor,which fed a dumpster underground, the labors switched this dumpster every couple hours.overhead cranes everywhere,

the die shoes ,had cast in lifting bars, they rolled over easy like,,using two cranes if desired
 
I would need to see a cost breakdown with real math. I have seen too much misinformation from both sides on the green energy debate. I have actually toured wind farms, mind you it was a dozen years ago or so. I was the most annoying person on the tour, like I was when I toured Boulder Dam asking a mess of technical questions. On the wind farms the issue was the braking systems to keep the blades from spinning too fast. That was where a lot of the maintenance costs were.

That is real math

a dozen years ago?

meaningless

wind is now cheaper than coal, note the link is from Montana, which is a known leftist state...
 
Isn't wind still one of the most expensive if not the most expensive ways of generating power due to maintenance costs? Isn't hydro the cheapest?

No

I will probably buy that wind has the highest maintenance costs as a percentage of total costs, but the whole no cost of fuel thing makes it cheaper


Installed cost is cheaper too, not having to build a big ass dam and all

And we are kinda out of rivers to dam up
 

Last I checked wind power generators get federal tax credits and they all seem to factor that into what they call generating costs. Also transmission costs are higher as wind farms are typically much further from areas they serve than other power generators. True that wind generated power is more efficient than it used to be, but I highly doubt it is down to 3 cents per kwh.
 
Last I checked wind power generators get federal tax credits and they all seem to factor that into what they call generating costs. Also transmission costs are higher as wind farms are typically much further from areas they serve than other power generators. True that wind generated power is more efficient than it used to be, but I highly doubt it is down to 3 cents per kwh.

All power generation in the US gets federal credits.
And deciphering who gets how much is something that many many high paid lawyers and lobbyists made sure you cant do easily.

Its funny, all the wind generators I have seen lately are actually CLOSER to the areas they serve than dams and coal plants.
Just east of LA, for example, on the hills outside of Palm Springs, there are rows of em. Its probably 3 times as far, at the least, to Hoover dam.
Same thing up by Seattle- an hour or so east of town, just over the pass in Ellensburg, the wind generators are thick in the hills. Its another hour's drive at least to the big dams on the Columbia.
In the actual scheme of transmission lines, both of those sources, as well as the big solar farms in both locations, are really pretty close to the big population centers.
The offshore wind generators they are building off the NY-Rhode Island- Ma coasts are likewise quite close to the consumers.

So I would say you are shooting from the hip, there pardner.
 
All power generation in the US gets federal credits.
And deciphering who gets how much is something that many many high paid lawyers and lobbyists made sure you cant do easily.

Its funny, all the wind generators I have seen lately are actually CLOSER to the areas they serve than dams and coal plants.
Just east of LA, for example, on the hills outside of Palm Springs, there are rows of em. Its probably 3 times as far, at the least, to Hoover dam.
Same thing up by Seattle- an hour or so east of town, just over the pass in Ellensburg, the wind generators are thick in the hills. Its another hour's drive at least to the big dams on the Columbia.
In the actual scheme of transmission lines, both of those sources, as well as the big solar farms in both locations, are really pretty close to the big population centers.
The offshore wind generators they are building off the NY-Rhode Island- Ma coasts are likewise quite close to the consumers.

So I would say you are shooting from the hip, there pardner.

As the annoying person on the windmill farm tour and on a tour of Boulder Dam, I was told the generation cost of the windmill farm was 12 cents per KWH, and the hydro plant locals were paying 6.8 cents per KWH all charges included delivered. That was a decade or so ago, as far as green power goes, hydro kicks butt. It is all on the maintenance costs. It is easy and cheap to control the turbine speed with hydro electric, to deliver 60hz power with wind power, that is expensive. The turbines are all in a very open room that climbing a story of stairs gets to a platform to work on them. I am sure working on a windmill is harder and more costly. Go ahead and explain where I am wrong, I am all ears.
 
As the annoying person on the windmill farm tour and on a tour of Boulder Dam, I was told the generation cost of the windmill farm was 12 cents per KWH, and the hydro plant locals were paying 6.8 cents per KWH all charges included delivered. That was a decade or so ago, as far as green power goes, hydro kicks butt. It is all on the maintenance costs. It is easy and cheap to control the turbine speed with hydro electric, to deliver 60hz power with wind power, that is expensive. The turbines are all in a very open room that climbing a story of stairs gets to a platform to work on them. I am sure working on a windmill is harder and more costly. Go ahead and explain where I am wrong, I am all ears.

Yes hydro kicks butt

Please propose a new dam site

Your information is a decade or more old

Wind without subsidies is cheaper than gas
It is now 'cheaper' to build new wind turbines than to just 'run' a Coal plant

Oh, and when Putin invades foreign countries, the price of wind doesn't go up





https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...d-power-so-cheap-they-re-outgrowing-subsidies


he reason, in short, is the subsidies worked. After decades of quotas, tax breaks and feed-in-tariffs, wind and solar have been deployed widely enough for manufacturers and developers to become increasingly efficient and drive down costs. The cost of wind power has fallen about 50% since 2010. Solar has dropped 85%. That makes them cheaper than new coal and gas plants in two-thirds of the world, according to BloombergNEF

Renewable Energy Prices Hit Record Lows: How Can Utilities Benefit From Unstoppable Solar And Wind?

.Over the last decade, wind energy prices have fallen 70% and solar photovoltaics have fallen 89% on average, according to Lazard's 2019 report. Utility-scale renewable energy prices are now significantly below those for coal and gas generation, and they're less than half the cost of nuclear. The latest numbers again confirm that building new clean energy generation is cheaper than running existing coal plants.

In other words, it is now cheaper to save the climate than to destroy it. Capacity installation trends reflect this economic reality, with new wind and solar generation coming online at a breakneck pace. Wind power capacity in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2010 and reached nearly 100 GW in 2018.

In Lazard's LCOE analysis, unsubsidized wind power and utility-scale solar come in at lower price ranges than any other analyzed resource including gas, coal, and nuclear. Unsubsidized wind ranges from $28–$54 per megawatt hour (MWh), and unsubsidized utility-scale solar ranges from $32–$42/MWh. Factoring in subsidies, wind prices plunge to $11–$45/MWh and utility-scale solar prices stay relatively stable at $31–$40/MWh.
 
Yes, fossil fuels have had subsidies for almost 100 years.

If a group of investors decided to start an energy company, what would be easier to get funded and started today? A coal plant, gas plant, nuclear, wind farm, solar? Once you have the location, wind and solar would get on line long before the others.

When Monarch decided to make the 10EE variable speed electric, (we'll skip the first hydraulic drive), was it less cost because of all the hardened gears that didn't have to be made for a geared drive like their other big lathes? So could it be that the auto companies are seeing more profit in electric vehicles than all the complexity of a piston engine and all the associated systems that accompany it? After initial development, could that be the case? Anyone know more inside info on this?

Conserve the oil for air travel as I don't see pushing a 777 across the Atlantic on batteries. There are a few battery powered twins getting close to a first flight. One issue with battery powered aircraft is your landing weight is the same as takeoff weight. The benefits are no fuel to keep on the CG and I guess same power at any altitude. But batteries may not fit in thin wings. Could work well for short haul service. They sure look great.

Eviation – Eviation Alice

Bye Aerospace E-Flyer’s Electric Airplane Flies 525 Miles on a Charge – Robb Report
 

This is flat-out vaporware and the chances of them achieving these performance figures are zero. I will bet money on it. Unless they are sitting on a monumental breakthrough in battery technology that will 10x their energy density while hitting all of the other performance metrics we tend to demand of them. In which case forget building a plane, because that's a trillion dollar company in year one.

I am happy to be wrong, and I hope I lose that bet, but for now I just can't see it.
 
I thought the same when someone suggested I test drive a Nissan Leaf. The energy density is less but since ~70% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline is wasted as heat, batteries are not that bad. But yes, I doubt they will get those numbers. Still, I would love to fly it.
 








 
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