The car giant started by marrying the daughter of the king

Chapter 366: High threshold? That’s a good thing!
Shenzhen’s popularity has increased in later generations, but the area of ​​the entire city is actually not very large.

Not to mention that there is still a saying about inside and outside the Great Wall, even the city of Shenzhen in later generations is not on the same level as the capital, Shanghai and Guangzhou in terms of urban area.

Shenzhen University and BMW Group are both in the same district, and it only takes less than ten minutes for the Wuling Sunshine to reach Shenzhen University.

Lai Yongfeng brought people to the office building of the School of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering with ease and found Liu Yushu very smoothly.

Although they are classmates, Liu Yushu's dress is obviously much more fashionably dressed.

Wearing a well-fitting suit and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, he exudes a strong scholarly air.

Lai Yongfeng quickly introduced the two people and then went straight to the point.

He knew that Jiang Hui was busy, and he also knew that Liu Yushu had been living abroad for so many years and didn't like to beat around the bush.

"Professor Liu, the hot stamping process you are currently researching, do you use water channels machined in the mold for quenching, or do you directly spray water in the mold for quenching?"

Jiang Hui's words made Liu Yushu feel his professionalism.

People who have not studied the technology in this field cannot ask such questions.

In particular, processing water channels inside the mold for quenching treatment is an approach that no company has ever tried before.

This technology is also an important achievement in which Liu Yushu was deeply involved, and is one of the core technologies of hot stamping technology.

"Director Jiang, your question hits the nail on the head."

"According to our current design, after the steel plate is processed into the required sheet on the blanking machine, it is transferred to the heating furnace for heating."

"From the perspective of the metallographic structure of steel plates, steel plates in the austenite state are relatively soft and very suitable for forming."

"Steel plates in the martensitic state are very strong and have very good collision performance, but they are difficult to process easily."

"We use special steel plates that are heated to produce austenite-based metallographic structures, which are then transferred to the mold for processing."

"After forming, water is injected into the mold waterway for quenching, which transforms the metallographic structure of the steel plate from austenite-based to martensite-based, greatly improving its strength."

"The original tensile strength of the steel plate was only more than 200 megapascals. After being processed by hot stamping, the strength will be increased to more than 1,000 megapascals, achieving a leap-forward change."

When it comes to professional matters, Liu Yushu suddenly becomes excited.

It is difficult for him to find someone in the country to communicate properly about the things he is researching.

Different fields have different meanings, and this situation is particularly serious in the field of scientific research.

For example, if experts who study the same physics have different research directions, they may not even be able to understand each other's papers, let alone have in-depth communication.

The chassis design that Lai Yongfeng focused on and the body steel plate forming and other technologies that Liu Yushu focused on are not particularly different, and they can be discussed to some extent, but it is just a discussion.

Unless Lai Yongfeng has time to conduct in-depth research on the hot stamping process, the two of them can communicate comfortably.

Now that he had finally met someone who seemed to have done some research in this area, Liu Yushu immediately became interested in talking.

"After the hot stamping process, the strength of the steel plate becomes more than 1,000 megapascals. It would be very difficult to process the parts again at this time, right?"

"Our parts are only formed once in the mold. I guess we can't use them directly on cars. Do we need to trim the parts?"

When it comes to professional technology, Jiang Hui is never afraid of anyone.

Even though Liu Yushu is an expert in this field and his research may be deeper than Jiang Hui's, it is definitely not as broad as Jiang Hui's.

"Yes, this is indeed a problem. Saab Automobile has introduced laser cutting machines to perform edge trimming and hole punching of parts."

"In front of the laser, no matter how high the intensity is, it is not a problem."

Liu Yushu worked at Saab Automobile for several years before returning to China. He is more familiar than anyone else with the processing technology of hot stamping parts used on Saab 9000.

"The current laser processing equipment technology still needs to be further improved. Whether it is the speed or accuracy of laser processing, it may not be able to fully meet the needs."

"The most important thing is that the price of such laser cutting equipment should be very high, and these costs must be amortized to the processing costs of the parts, and ultimately reflected in the selling price."

"Hot stamping steel sheets are special in themselves, so their prices are more expensive than ordinary automotive steel sheets."

"The processing requires heating and special quenching treatment, so the processing efficiency should be relatively low."

“Plus, the mold design for hot stamping parts must be very complicated, and the processing cost and processing technology are very high.”

“The final cost of the parts should be more than ten times the cost of the original traditional cold stamping parts, right?”

Jiang Hui directly pointed out the biggest problem with the current hot stamping technology.

This problem was basically solved after 2010.

Prior to this, the cost of hot stamping parts was too high, the difficulty of promotion was too great, and the process was not particularly mature.

That is, for niche high-end models like Saab, you dare to try it.

After all, Saab is much less well-known than BMW and Mercedes, but the company is positioned as a luxury car brand.

It will be difficult to do publicity work without coming up with something innovative.

"Director Jiang, what you said is very correct. The hot stamping process is indeed not mature enough. Currently, only Saab Automobile has used two parts on its cars on a trial basis. There is still a long way to go before it can be widely popularized."

"But I am very sure that this technology will have great application prospects in the automotive industry once it matures."

Liu Yushu also realized that if he wanted to study this technology well at Shenzhen University, the support and cooperation from BMW Group would be indispensable.

So I was afraid that Jiang Hui would lose confidence in this technology.

"I agree with you on this point."

"The use of hot stamping technology in automobiles can greatly improve the strength of the car body, allowing the safety of passengers in the car to be protected to the greatest extent when the car crashes."

"BMW Group plans to apply this technology to the first off-road vehicle of the Land Rover brand, making it the vehicle with the best collision performance in the world."

"But what difficulties are there in achieving this goal? I would also like to hear your thoughts."

The development schedule for the next new car model is very tight, so Jiang Hui naturally hopes that Liu Yushu will participate in it personally.

Otherwise, if he had to personally lead his team to research everything, he would be too busy to handle it.

"When is the Land Rover brand off-road vehicle expected to be launched?"

Before answering the question, Liu Yushu felt it necessary to find out how much time Jiang Hui had left for him. Although he had already had experience in the application and promotion of hot stamping parts when he was at Saab Automobile, from what Jiang Hui meant, this time it was obviously not a symbolic use of one or two parts, but a large-scale use.

The technical difficulty behind this is not just one or two points.

Not to mention other things, just the construction of the production line for hot stamping process is a big problem.

"We will be able to launch it at the end of next year at the earliest, and at the first half of the year after next at the latest."

Jiang Hui did not make any final statement. After all, the time was too tight and it was hard to say whether it could be achieved.

"To produce hot stamping parts, there are several key issues that must be resolved."

Feeling the urgency of time, Liu Yushu prepared to explain everything to Jiang Hui.

In order to avoid the schedule not being met, Jiang Hui still thought it was due to his poor skills.

"The first is raw materials. We need to find a steel manufacturer to produce special hot stamping steel plates, and we need to work with them to develop this type of steel plate."

"Otherwise, if you use ordinary steel plates for processing, you can't achieve such an effect."

"The second is the purchase and installation of the heating furnace. The best way is to use a large heating furnace that is dozens of meters long for processing, but such a furnace requires a large investment and the process control is very complicated."

"Considering that this is our first attempt and time is tight, we can use a box furnace to heat the first production line, which can greatly save time and investment costs."

"Then there is the purchase of presses, which will also be a new issue."

"Unless we import from Europe, there is definitely no press produced directly by any equipment manufacturer in China that can be used in our production line."

"During the hot stamping process, the mold has a pressure holding process of more than 10 to 20 seconds, which requires a special control method for the press."

As Liu Yushu spoke, he observed Jiang Hui's reaction to see if he could keep up with his pace.

This kind of in-depth technical discussion is difficult to understand for people who don’t understand the process.

Fortunately, Jiang Hui’s feedback made him very satisfied.

"The third is the processing of hot stamping dies, which is very different from traditional cold stamping dies and the difficulty is completely not of the same order of magnitude."

"At Saab Automobile, the supplier directly purchased the most advanced machine tool products in Europe, which are said to be high-precision five-axis CNC machine tools that can be used to process nuclear submarine propellers, so that the mold can be processed smoothly."

"Especially for the water channels inside the mold, the processing depth is very deep, and ordinary machine tools simply cannot meet the requirements, and the requirements for the tool are also very high."

“This is actually the part that I am most worried about.”

Although Liu Yushu has not been to China for many years, he still has a general understanding of the country's industrial level.

He had no confidence at all whether China could produce the hot stamping molds that were extremely difficult to process in Europe.

Even if it is processed, the time and cost required is still an unknown.

"I will personally help solve this problem and ask Nanshan Equipment to design a special machine tool for hot stamping die processing."

Jiang Hui naturally knew that Liu Yushu's worries were justified.

It is not easy at all to process a simple set of molds well.

If you don't pay attention to any part, the final part's precision will not meet the requirements.

After hot forming, the strength of the parts is too high, and if the precision is not good, they will basically have to be scrapped.

Even if you want to change it, there is no way to change it.

“If the mold processing problems and the material and equipment problems mentioned above can be solved, then I think it is completely feasible to use hot stamping parts on Land Rover off-road vehicles.”

"It's just that the time is too tight. All in all, it's less than two years. Even considering the trial production schedule of parts, we actually only have more than a year."

Liu Yushu was a little uncomfortable with the sudden fast pace of work.

When in Europe, everyone's work pace is generally slow, and it takes four to five years to develop a car model.

How can one force a car to be marketed like BMW?

"ten thousand years is too long, fight for now."

"Our Chinese auto industry lags far behind the world level. If we continue to develop step by step, we will never catch up with others."

"So it is necessary to catch up with the time and even think of some ways to overtake others."

"The large-scale use of hot stamping parts in advance is one of the ways for us to achieve overtaking."

Jiang Hui will not change the production schedule of Land Rover off-road vehicles just because of Liu Yushu's concerns.

This is simply impossible.

However, there are indeed many barriers to entry in the large-scale production of hot stamping parts.

Basically, these problems require your own personal involvement in order to have a hope of being solved quickly.

However, as an ingeniously chosen technological breakthrough solution, it is worth spending a little more time on it.

"Director Jiang said it very well. We really can't develop step by step."

"Don't worry, Lao Liu. Our college will fully support your research on hot stamping technology. BMW Group will also provide sufficient funds and personnel to assist you in developing related products."

"Then we will bring a huge surprise to the world and let everyone know that China's automobile industry is also at an advanced level."

After listening for a while in a daze, Lai Yongfeng finally found an opportunity to interrupt.

Through the conversation between Jiang Hui and Liu Yushu, he also realized the threshold of hot stamping technology.

However, sometimes a higher threshold is a good thing.

This means that other OEMs in the world have not yet used it on a large scale, or even formally considered using it.

There is a lot of room for promotion, and the effect is likely to be very strong.

With great effort, miracles can happen. Everything is possible.

(End of this chapter)