Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?
Posted by Steve203 On 2014/6/22 0:18:47
I have been to the BMW Munich plant four times over the past 15 years,
Fisher body opened a stamping plant in Kalamazoo in 65 or 66. The plant had an open house, and my 12 year old self got a good look at an old school stamping operation.
iirc, each stamping line had 5 or 6 presses. The man at the first press fed cut sheets down a ramp into the press. After that, sometimes people, sometimes a prehistoric robot arm, would take the piece out of the press and drop it on a conveyor to the next press in the line. Each subsequent press would trim the piece or make the impression from the previous press deeper. The guides pointed with pride to the safety feature in those pre OSHA days: the trigger for each press had two buttons a couple feet apart, so the operator had to use both hands to trip the thing, to make sure he didn't have a hand in the press. At the end of the line, the stampings were nested in crates for shipment. The nearest assembly plant would have been Olds in Lansing.
I don't recall the place being excessively noisy, but I was so absorbed in watching how they did things the noise may not have penetrated....and the plant floor was wood blocks, just like EGB had.
The pic is of Budd in Detroit just before it closed down. Just about as I remember Fisher Body in Kazoo: 6 presses in a row.
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Fisher body opened a stamping plant in Kalamazoo in 65 or 66. The plant had an open house, and my 12 year old self got a good look at an old school stamping operation.
iirc, each stamping line had 5 or 6 presses. The man at the first press fed cut sheets down a ramp into the press. After that, sometimes people, sometimes a prehistoric robot arm, would take the piece out of the press and drop it on a conveyor to the next press in the line. Each subsequent press would trim the piece or make the impression from the previous press deeper. The guides pointed with pride to the safety feature in those pre OSHA days: the trigger for each press had two buttons a couple feet apart, so the operator had to use both hands to trip the thing, to make sure he didn't have a hand in the press. At the end of the line, the stampings were nested in crates for shipment. The nearest assembly plant would have been Olds in Lansing.
I don't recall the place being excessively noisy, but I was so absorbed in watching how they did things the noise may not have penetrated....and the plant floor was wood blocks, just like EGB had.
The pic is of Budd in Detroit just before it closed down. Just about as I remember Fisher Body in Kazoo: 6 presses in a row.
Attach file:
(35.86 KB)
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