At the start, I wasn’t sure whether this video was using robo-narration, but I eventually concluded it didn’t. The short and apparently truncated part at the end about forging crankshafts seems completely unrelated.
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Clearly Chinese-origin robo-narration.
Interestingly, the thumbnail is of cast aluminum wheels, not the steel wheels that appear in the video. That may relate to the truncation noted. Perhaps this was cut down from something longer.
I find myself often in a state of wonderment and admiration when I see examples of assembly line machinery, especially for heavy manufacturing like this. The engineering solutions over (I guess) the past 200 years or so - maybe longer - are impressive. Just in thus video, handling the weights and temperature extremes reliably and cost-effectively, are nothing short of amazing. I have read The Perfectionists which describes precision engineering. I wonder if there is another, broader history of evolution of machines of manufacturing, generally. It is all the more amazing, given the constraints of known materials at the time. Materials science has had its own astounding revolution.
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Yup! Elon Musk often speaks about how engineering the building of rockets is more difficult than the rockets themselves.
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The product is not the monument to human ingenuity and achievement—the factory is.
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Somewhat relatedly, I had heard on a podcast that making aluminum wheels constituted a huge fraction of BMWs carbon footprint. I can’t find that particular story but here is a related one:
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