Crissa

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The question of how Tesla is going to adhere things to the folded steel and avoid cathodic corrosion?

Well... the secret is just a minute into this:




Tesla takes a piece of steel and sticks it in the middle of a nylon injection molding machine to have pre-formed plastic through and against and around the metal beam. No hand fiddling, everything all aligned perfectly.

The Mach-E is using a cast zinc bar... a big single piece, too. But not at the tolerances of the Tesla part. (In the Y and 3 the gigacasting eliminates this part completely, but not completely the 'top hat'.)

-Crissa
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Ogre

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That’s pretty cool. I hadn’t realized they could injection mold reinforced plastic directly onto the metal parts. I have to wonder if this will be consolidated into a single cast or molded part.
 
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Crissa

Crissa

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Embedding steel into plastic molds has been a thing for a long while, it's just more complicated. And as they show, there is a problem sometimes of getting it to adhere. But hopefully they use enough sprue to get around that part.

It's like gluing zipties in place, when it works right. Very strong.

The thing is, realizing you're making half a million of these so not being afraid to dive in and pay for the complex molds to do it.

Really feels space-agey when you see these parts, tho, right?

-Crissa
 

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As soon as he started talking about the Model Y piece, this popped into my head...

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