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!