The car giant started by marrying the daughter of the king

Chapter 378 Hot Stamping

Lingnan is very hot in August.

Before air conditioning became widely popularized, it can be said that the office environment in Lingnan was relatively poor.

Especially inside the factory workshop, it was a bit stuffy.

Even the humming of the triathlon couldn’t completely relieve the heat.

However, in the production workshop of BMW Group, the workers are working hard and do not look tired at all.

This month, BMW Group paid double salary to all employees to celebrate the huge breakthrough in Mercedes-Benz car production.

According to Jiang Hui's promise, as long as the production and sales of Mercedes-Benz cars can remain stable at a level of more than 10,000 units per month, everyone will be paid double salary for the next year.

In this way, the workers' enthusiasm will naturally increase.

The factories in Shenzhen offer their workers much better wages than those in other places.

Normally, a level 4 worker earns only 50 to 60 yuan a month in the capital area, and this is the result of salary increases in recent years.

But in Shenzhen, you can basically get a monthly salary of 100 yuan.

If double salary is paid, it means about 200 yuan per month.

This treatment is far more than the salary of a department-level cadre.

You can imagine how high everyone's work enthusiasm is.

"Director, this is a sample of our hot stamping B-pillar. The materials are provided by Shougang, and the molds are all designed and processed by ourselves."

Liu Yushu brought Jiang Hui to Nanshan Technology's hot stamping workshop to view the latest samples produced.

After more than half a year of hard work, Nanshan Technology’s first hot stamping production line was finally built.

The first thing produced is the B-pillar of the Land Rover pickup truck.

This part is located between the front door and the rear door, and is a very critical part to ensure the strength of the car body.

In order to ensure the strength of B-pillar parts, most manufacturers use thicker high-strength steel plates.

However, if the steel plate is too thick, the forming performance will decrease, and it may crack if stamped accidentally, which will have a great impact on the life of the mold.

Moreover, high-strength steel plates are not easy to form, and the higher the thickness, the more difficult it is to ensure the forming performance.

Now, after using hot stamping technology, the steel plate does not need to be that thick, between 1.2 mm and 1.8 mm is basically enough.

The thickness of most hot stamping parts is within this range.

"Has Shougang already developed hot stamped steel plates with aluminum-silicon coatings?"

Compared with the parts themselves, Jiang Hui is more concerned about hot stamping materials. In the future, BMW Group can rely on this to collect a lot of patent fees.

Especially once everyone sees the benefits of hot stamping parts, global usage will surely increase rapidly.

“The aluminum-silicon coating itself is not a particularly difficult process, but the difficulty is that no one has thought of using this coating to produce hot stamped steel sheets before.”

"We directly provided the process plan to cooperate with Shougang and authorized them to use this patent. They completed the production of aluminum-silicon coated steel plates after a slight adjustment based on the existing process of hot-dip galvanized steel plate production."

“As for the production of bare steel, we only need to add boron to the existing interstitial steel with a tensile strength of 270 MPA to basically meet the initial performance requirements.”

"In the next stage, we are also trying to improve the process formula of hot stamping steel plate and launch it as the next generation of hot stamping steel plate."

Wu Ming is responsible for all steel-related development business of the BMW Group, and hot stamping steel plates are naturally the top priority during this period.

BMW Group has put forward a complete set of process solutions, and Capital Steel Plant is essentially doing OEM work for it.

These hot-stamped steel plates cannot be sold to the outside without the permission of the BMW Group.

Even if they agree to sell it to outside parties, they will charge 15% of the sales as patent royalties.

In order to ensure that the patent fees can be recovered in the future, BMW Group has registered patents for hot stamping steel plates all over the world.

At that time, unless the international auto giants do not use it, they will have to pay more.

"The research and development of hot stamping steel plates can be regarded as a new breakthrough in domestic automotive steel plates, and this credit can be attributed to Shougang."

“But the price they sell us for steel plates must be the most favorable among all customers.”

What Jiang Hui cares about most is interests, not the illusory domestic honor.

State-owned enterprises such as Shougang need to achieve some results to get some people promoted and get salary increases, so that when the time comes to pay patent fees, there will be fewer different voices.

"I think so too. This is not only the case with hot stamping steel sheets, but also with the heating furnaces, hydraulic presses, and laser cutting machines used in the production line."

"We worked with related supporting units to build the first hot stamping production line in China. The technology and production efficiency of this production line are the most advanced in the world."

"Such an achievement can be well publicized, and all related parties will gain a lot of benefits."

"Who knows, maybe in a few years these production lines will be able to earn foreign exchange through exports."

Liu Yushu has devoted his whole heart and soul to this project during this period, and he has fully felt the prospects of this project.

In the next twenty years, or even the next forty years, the application scale of hot stamping parts in the automotive industry will definitely become larger and larger.

Not to mention the future growth of the automobile market, just the current global annual production of tens of millions of vehicles, as long as more than half of the vehicles are equipped with a few hot stamping parts, this scale will be very exaggerated.

By then, the world will need at least 100 hot stamping production lines to meet market demand.

If it goes well, Nanshan Technology may become the world's largest supplier of hot stamping parts and successfully enter the supply chains of various automobile giants such as General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen.

It is definitely much more satisfying when someone is interested in your technology and actively comes to you for cooperation than you having to beg them to give you orders.

It is extremely difficult for Chinese auto parts companies to enter the international market.

Even by 2020, only a few auto parts companies have achieved internationalization, and their influence cannot be compared with giants such as Bosch and Denso.

Looking at the world's top 100 auto parts list, we can also see a lot of things. "Hot stamping parts have great potential, and our Land Rover SUVs and Land Rover pickups are waiting for it to make a splash."

"Compared to the simple export of Mercedes-Benz cars to the United States, this time our Land Rover brand models are ready to go global and take the initiative to enter markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa."

"We will also take the initiative to cooperate with General Motors in the American market to increase the sales of this car together."

"Whether the BMW Group can gain a firm foothold in the global automotive market depends on the performance of the Land Rover brand."

"Although the performance of our engines and gearboxes is not bad, as a new company, it is difficult to convince consumers that their stability can be better than that of auto giants."

"At this time, we need to find some unconventional ways to promote it. The ultra-high strength and safety performance provided by hot stamping parts is a good entry point."

Although Jiang Hui has emphasized the importance of hot stamping technology many times internally before, there is no harm in saying it a few more times.

"This is indeed a disruptive change in the field of automobile bodies, and its impact in the future will surely be enormous."

"As a young Chinese auto company, if we can lead this trend in the global auto industry, the potential benefits in the future will be enormous."

“First, we need to solve the problem of whether there is any, and then quickly solve the problem of how to produce it well, quickly and cheaply.”

Liu Yushu has made up his mind to devote his life to hot stamping technology.

He had a hunch that if he did a good job in this niche area, he would have a place in both the Chinese and global automotive industries in the future.

It is definitely not an exaggeration to say that he gained both fame and fortune.

“Is the production of hot stamping parts molds a big problem now?”

As a very critical link, the production quality of the mold is related to the precision and quality of the parts. Jiang Hui is very clear about its difficulty.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that there are a lot of mold manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta of China in the future, basically all kinds of molds can be produced.

But it’s 1985.

Whether it is the special steel used in molds or the machine tools for processing molds, there is still a great shortage of them in China.

If these two problems are not solved well, it will be very difficult to improve the mold level.

"We have started using the machine tools purchased from Japan, which have helped a lot in processing the mold waterways."

"However, our mold materials are still not good enough. If we use these molds to stamp parts, we estimate that they will need to be overhauled after 20 strokes, and will eventually need to be re-molded after 30 strokes."

Liu Yushu also talked about some of the current problems he is facing.

Although the sales volume of various Chinese automobiles is not very high, normally a mold life of 20 times is sufficient.

But he knows that the mainstream international automobile stamping parts manufacturers have molds that can generally stamp 50 times without any problems.

Even some manufacturers' stamping dies can still be used normally after being used 100 million times.

"Step by step, hot stamping parts are heated to more than 900 degrees before being formed in the mold, and then quenched. This is very different from traditional cold stamping and does have a certain impact on the life of the mold."

"The next step is to develop special steel suitable for making hot stamping dies."

Jiang Hui is well aware of the importance of special steel.

BMW Group will not build a steelmaking plant with a full industrial chain itself, but it still needs to purchase crude steel from outside and further process it into the required special steel.

Relatively speaking, the equipment required for the fine processing of crude steel is not that much, and the pollution to the environment is not that great, so it can be considered to be located in Shenzhen or surrounding cities.

"I have communicated with the human resources department and hope to recruit some early retired engineers and technicians from various steel mills to work in our R&D center on special steel R&D."

"At the same time, I also arranged for technicians to communicate with Nanshan Equipment to see how to design and produce a special steel processing production line by ourselves, and produce key core equipment within the group as much as possible."

As an expert from Baosteel's Technical Department, Wu Ming has a relatively clear understanding of the level of the domestic equipment industry.

In his opinion, key equipment must either be imported from abroad or developed by Nanshan Equipment itself. It is unreliable to expect to purchase it from other domestic equipment manufacturers.

Otherwise, Baosteel's production lines would not need to be entirely imported from Japan.

"This work needs to be started as soon as possible. Not only does mold making require the use of special steel, but almost all parts on our vehicles also require this."

"Especially in the fields of engines, gearboxes and chassis, the requirements for special steel performance are very high. If we want to further improve the performance of our products, we need to make major breakthroughs in materials."

The profitability of BMW Group has now improved significantly, especially after a major breakthrough in export earnings. Jiang Hui now has more funds to arrange people to conduct raw material research.

Otherwise, if all kinds of special steels need to be imported from abroad, it will not only waste foreign exchange and have high costs, but also have a very long procurement cycle, which will simply not be able to meet the development requirements of the BMW Group.

Not to mention anything else, the export volume of Mercedes-Benz cars has suddenly increased. If a large amount of special steel is imported from abroad, the procurement cycle will be more than half a year.

This will directly lead to the inability to increase production capacity, which will have a huge impact.

On the other hand, if the planning is done well and a large amount of special steel is purchased in advance, it will also result in a huge waste if it becomes inventory at that time.

Therefore, in the end, we must still purchase from domestic sources and produce the key parts ourselves.

"The current domestic production of special steel is not high and the quality levels vary."

“For some less critical areas, surface treatment and heat treatment can still meet the performance requirements of the parts.”

“To further improve, it is indeed necessary to significantly improve the performance of special steels.”

Liu Yushu has been troubled by the processing of hot stamping dies recently and has a deep understanding of special steel.

Seeing that Jiang Hui was willing to spend a lot of money to make special steel, he was still very pleased.

Material research and development is very expensive.

The key is when the results will be available. Sometimes it is just like buying a lottery ticket, there is no predictability at all.

Therefore, there are not many factories in China that are willing to conduct serious material research.

(End of this chapter)