Field exploration! Walking into the polar fox factory, this is the real top manufacturing process in the world.
With the maturity of technology and policies and the increasing rationality of contemporary consumers, the status of new energy vehicles is constantly improving, and many people’s attitudes towards new energy vehicles have gradually changed from "prejudice" to "acceptance". And some car companies embrace the media with an open concept, hoping to let more people know about themselves. On December 24th, ARCFOX Extreme Fox Extreme Wisdom Factory OPEN DAY, and many media people came to this high-end intellectual manufacturing base of BAIC Blue Valley Magna, which is known as "Oriental Graz", to visit the intelligent workshop production line, to learn about the world-class MAFACT production system, and to experience Magna’s manufacturing technology and management system in the forefront of the world in an immersive way. It is precisely because of this zero-distance contact with "Oriental Graz" that everyone has a deeper understanding of the extremely fox car and further unveiled the mystery behind its high quality.
The top management system is comprehensive and reliable, and Magna blessing guarantees high-end quality.
When it comes to Magna, I believe that people who care about cars will not be too strange. This is a diversified global auto parts supplier with more than 100 years of high-end automobile manufacturing experience and history. Its factory in Graz, Austria, has produced more than 3.7 million cars, including Mercedes-Benz G-Class, aston martin Rapide and other top luxury cars.
So, why does Magna get the favor of many top luxury car brands? This has to mention Magna’s top management system. Magna’s MAFACT system consists of eight sections: safety, health and environmental protection, quality, excellent manufacturing, material control and logistics, engineering design and pre-quality planning, management, human resources and cost. Each section has different goals and tools, and the corresponding goals are achieved through the application of lean tools, thus achieving the business indicators of SQTCM (safety, quality, timeliness, cost and incentive) in general, thus achieving world-class manufacturing and high-end manufacturing.
In December 2019, BAIC Blue Valley Magna’s high-end intellectual manufacturing base was completed, and Magna opened a vehicle manufacturing plant outside Europe for the first time, which is also the first Magna joint venture high-end intellectual manufacturing base in Asia. The comprehensive introduction of MAFACT standard system in this base is the core competitiveness of BAIC Blue Valley Magna high-end intelligent manufacturing base, and it is also the system guarantee for entering the era of high-end intelligent manufacturing of new energy. This also means that it will bring comprehensive and reliable high-end quality assurance with world-class manufacturing standards at the same level as first-class luxury cars. Of course, as Ji Guowei, Party Secretary and General Manager of BAIC Blue Valley Magna said, BAIC chose to cooperate with Magna precisely because it took a fancy to Magna’s manufacturing and development capabilities.
Fast, good, strong and economical, and the automatic production line guarantees "high precision"
Efficiency is a part that car companies must consider in this era, and automatic production is naturally essential. The high-end intelligent manufacturing base of BAIC Blue Valley Magna is also confirming the characteristics in the digital age. In the stamping workshop, body workshop, painting workshop and assembly workshop, including battery PACK workshop, you can see the busy figure of automatic production lines and mechanical arms.
In the stamping workshop, the stamping A line which has been completed at present is a fully enclosed and high-speed automatic production line, which can realize the mixed production of steel and aluminum. Mainly responsible for the production of large and medium-sized stamping parts for car bodies, such as side walls, fenders and door covers, with four characteristics: fast, good, strong and economical. According to Zhou Fang, a stamping process engineer, there are 40 self-made parts (including 15 aluminum parts) in the stamping workshop. According to MAFACT system standards, all-round deep control is carried out from raw materials to final products, from appliances to equipment, and the pass rate of one-time submission reaches 97%, while most OEMs have this index of about 90%.
In the body workshop, there is the first 30JPH steel-aluminum mixed production line in China, which is also a fully automatic production line, consisting of 290 German KUKA robots and 206 sets of connecting equipment (German KUKA robots are known as the first of the four global robot families, which can achieve millimeter-level high-precision positioning and the highest control accuracy in the same industry). Thanks to highly automated production, the automation rate of all connection points (riveting and welding) has reached 100%, the automation rate of gluing has reached more than 95%, the overall personnel arrangement has been optimized, and the personnel utilization rate has reached more than 85%, which is at the leading level in China as a whole.
In the painting workshop, you can see a fully automatic conveying system composed of 52 ABB high-performance robots. After multiple painting processes, the LASD water-based damping coating made of polymer resin with appropriate fillers and auxiliary materials will be automatically sprayed on the car body. In the assembly workshop, the vehicle can be monitored online in real time and the position of the vehicle can be automatically reported; Automatic identification and automatic tightening of key processes. The key equipment of chassis can be automatically measured and adjusted to the qualified range, and can be automatically calibrated at regular intervals.
It is worth mentioning that in the battery PACK workshop, the automation rate of the whole line is also 53%, including automatic on-line, automatic inspection, gluing and cleaning of modules, installation and fixation of modules, FDS riveting process and so on. Zhu Juncheng, a battery PACK process engineer, said: "Through high automation, the precision, consistency and higher production efficiency of the overall process are ensured, and the battery safety is also more guaranteed."
Strive for Excellence to create dazzling product strength, and hard-core quality is not afraid of the ultimate test.
At the moment when the demand for product strength is extremely high, the blue valley Magna with MAFACT production system is fully introduced, which gives Extreme Fox a firm quality foundation and ultra-high precision and production efficiency; Coupled with the control of the whole process of material selection, manufacturing and testing, the "Excellence" is vividly reflected in the fox. The dazzling product strength of Extreme Fox can be seen from "Top Ten Car Bodies in China", "Best Materials" and the first batch of platinum grade certificates for corrosion resistance evaluation of CA-CAP.
Of course, the fox’s high demands for himself don’t stop there. In order to achieve a better lightweight body, the hybrid body with upper steel and lower aluminum is adopted in the fox car. The manufacturing process of this hybrid body is more complicated than that of the all-aluminum body and requires more advanced technology. For example, more mechanical connection methods such as SPR and FDS are used in connection, and the problem of contact corrosion also needs to be considered; In welding, the method of pickling passivation before welding or pre-coating by material supplier is adopted to solve the problem of dense oxide film with high hardness on aluminum alloy surface. As for why we should do this, it actually has something to do with the hope of providing users with a better driving experience. For electric vehicles, laying batteries on the chassis leads to a great increase in weight, and using lightweight body to complement each other will have faster dynamic response and lighter dynamic performance, which is a very important part of the user experience. Under this technology, the lightweight coefficient of Alfa T body is 1.78 and that of Alfa S body is 1.6, which can be said to be the leading level in the automobile industry.
In addition, the hybrid car body with upper steel and lower aluminum consists of a cage-type frame structure surrounded by high-strength steel. In the most critical parts of the cage-type structure, such as A-pillar and B-pillar, the polar fox adopts thermoformed steel with a pressure of more than 1500MPa. According to engineers, this kind of hot-formed steel is mostly used in tanks, submarines and space shuttles, and it can bear more than 10 tons of pressure per square centimeter, which is equivalent to the weight of two adult elephants. According to reports, the torsional stiffness of the new generation of intelligent luxury pure electric car Alfa S reaches 63,000 nm/deg, reaching the ceiling level of the industry, and the torsional stiffness of the all-terrain pure electric SUV Alfa T reaches 50,000 nm/deg, even higher than Rolls-Royce Phantom.
In terms of wading depth, which is closely related to user safety, the industry standard of cars is 300mm, and the polar fox can still reach the excellent level of wading test when it is 800mm, which not only ensures the safety of cockpit occupants, but also effectively avoids the risk of accidents caused by battery water. In addition, in the fully transparent shower room in the workshop, Polar Fox can easily pass the all-round shower test of the whole vehicle without dead angle, such as simulated moderate rain, heavy rain and even heavy rain, and the air tightness of the whole vehicle reaches 58SCFM, far exceeding the industry standard. What’s more worth mentioning is that after the precise production, the power battery used by the polar fox has to pass more than 200 tests and verifications, and the coverage and strength are far higher than the national standard requirements. For example, the national standard wet-heat cycle test cycle is only 3 days, and the extreme fox car needs to do the high-temperature and high-humidity cycle test equivalent to more than 10 years, more than 3 months, and the alternating test under the working condition of full use temperature for more than 8 months, so as to ensure that the power battery system adapts to the use scenarios in various environments throughout the country.
Write it at the end
Through a zero-distance visit to the polar fox factory, we have a deeper understanding of the "story" behind the high quality of polar fox cars. Different from most new car-making forces, polar fox has the resource advantages endowed by traditional car companies, and its high-end quality is relatively more reliable under the blessing of the world’s top manufacturing technology. It can be seen that it is cautious to users. Of course, the competition will always be persistent and cruel. I believe that Fox will continue to improve, and in this "spring tide" of the development of new energy vehicles, it will continue to break through and make its competitiveness by going up one flight of stairs!