China travel report… Sprintstars, more wheels and more China…

Last couple of days I worked on our sprintstar project.

I visited several factories and checked who can do what… when we bring the sprintstar back, it will be a perfect wheel, without flaws… and I think I found a couple of right people here to help me out!

First the factory that will make the centers… the sprintstar center is not a mass product for a big Chinese company, so we had to find a genius with a small company who would take on the task…

Yes I still love excenter metal stamping machinesresses… I think they’re the finest machines in the world…:)

But here there’s other machines also needed for steel wheel center production, even  in “low” quantities… everything under a million pieces is low quantity in China….LOL!

Here’s a tooling department only for steel wheels, a place where I feel very comfortable…:)

A center of a steel wheel with a correct Max Wheel Load is a 10 step process! That means, ten sets of tools!

Yes indeed, for only one wheel model!

We discussed also the perfection of the bolt holes, they have to be domed, not straight,and pressed out, not in!!

Thanks to Edwin for helping to set up this…

2 days talking about Sprintstars centers and steel wheels, I’m almost an expert now…:)

This “circles” will be centers soon, sprintstar centers? Can you imagine how important the diameter of these “circles” are? 1mm more or less will give a different finished result.

Lunchtime!!! In China everything they eat is very fresh, and this is the style I like the most, you choose what you wanna eat, and then they cook it for you!

In every city in China is always a lot of construction, check out how many construction cranes in just one area… can You count over ten? They’re seventeen in this picture… but you need to zoom in…:)

 

 

 

Ok back to work now…:)
Next factory is the factory that will make our outer rim and do the assembling

Let’s start with the assembly first, this is where they weld the center in the rim, its semi automatic, To ensure equal welds on every wheel.

Every station has two welding torches to speed up the process… it was cool to look at for a while..

This is the rim finishing line, as You can see the rims come here already preformed and been rolled to exact specifications on this line.

Here every single rim is pressure test to ensure 100% no leaking, after the test the air valve stem is punched.

Quality tests during several steps in the process, we like to see this a lot…

This company makes lot of different steels of wheels, mainly for the Australian market, look at how many different centers they have…:)

and even more…:)

Here is the center stamping, but the BBT Sprintstar centers will not be stamped in this factory..

The powder coat and paint department was checked out, but not good enough for what we need,

So what can we say after these three days… Factory 1 is approved for centers, this guy can change his name on his business card to Mr Center, but because of low production was way overpriced on rims and assembly, off course because he only like centers…:)

Factory n°2 is approved to make the rims and to the assembly, they can weld with a special procedure not to burn the chrome, The result was stunning….

And so Another day went by….

Next will be the chroming plant … maybe they can paint? … stay tuned…:)