I spent the better years of my life flying all over the world on a tiny little jet designing, developing, implementing, and commissioning high volume machining and assembly production systems for the big three, Benz, Suzuki, etc, etc, etc (which is why I'm bald and retired at 40 lol)

I just found a picture in an old box today that I thought some of you might like to see simply for interest's sake.

This is a very small rough turning cell that I designed and commissioned somewhere in North America. The machines are vertical CNC turning centres 35 & 55hp I think by looking at them. The robots are Kuka's and ran on a Windows based network. The machines were offset by automated gauging and the chips ran into a conveyor. One operator loaded castings at one end, and a second unloaded roughed rotors on the other. Finish turning is done after the rotor is mounted to the front corner assembly. Once a day, the cage was opened and all of the inserts were changed, chucks greased, etc etc.

This cell was completely flexible and would adapt to any rotor you fed it. It produced all the ford F series rotors from F-150 through F-450 and GMT325 (S-10), GMT360 (Bravada, TB etc), and GMT800 (fullsize pickups)

So if you ever wondered - this is where your first set of rotors came from.

 

That is very interesting.. I figured they were machined and polished by machine.

 

Lucky guy.... I think its amazing what the automated machines can do... reminds me of watching the new camaros being painted.... that is a freaking symphony of machining at its finest

 

Very cool, I've always wondered how they made things the show extreme factories shows a lot of that sort of stuff.