I have a Triumph TR6 and my son has an MGB. British Heritage makes all of the body panels (I had to replace about half the sheet metal on my car) and reportedly obtained the dies by tracking them down after the collapse of British Leyland. What happened to the corresponding 914 dies after production ceased?

I would very much doubt it - the 914 was just one of many, many projects. Their biggest customer was Ford, and the liaison between VW and Porsche didn't do Karmann many favours financially. Also, don't forget, Karmann went bust a while ago, and was bought out by VW – there is little remaining that ties in with the past other than the museum.

I visited the archives back in 1992, or thereabouts, and they were a complete mess, with styling drawings, blueprints etc just piled on the floor, gathering dust. The museum at the time was tiny and 'secret' – the company had no interest in the past, even that far back. Dies were worth money as recyclable material... Shame.

(PS - I hope I'm wrong and that some little old guy will open a door one day and discover a stash of panels and dies, but I won't hold my breath...).

would have been sold off as valuable scrap.
might have been close to worn out too, but given production numbers maybe not.

i read something about nissan having developed a new system for remaking obsolete panels. it was a year or two back. process was in its restoration shop for rebuilding GTRs. they developed a new robot method. i can recall an image of it.
looked like two robot arms either side of the metal panel which painstakingly rolled it or pressed it into the shape. the process was very slow at present. many hours to produce a single panel. but they had been able to remake whole sections of 90s GTRs for restoration purposes. they charge a fortune to have your GTR restored.

nissan were using the restoration shop for prototyping a new industrial technique for mass production - alternative to having to make heavy tool steel industrial dies. its going to have to make panels a lot faster though to be viable. still from small things big things come.

re the mgb body panel dies. i don't think they really left the industrial entity. i think rover group retained all the dies and set up a new small division, called british heritage or something similar, but it was not an outsider company, so it was probably not a matter of tracking them down, as much as thinking of what they could do with them - given the general chaos of the uk industrial scene in the 70s through 80s. they made a small run of modernised mgs with v8s in the 90s as a precursor to the mgf using those dies as the basis for the bodies. i think a couple of them ended up here though i don't think ever officially sold in aus.

It's probably the bankruptcy that caused the liquidation of the tooling. Even if it was good the value of the tool steel was high enough that it all probably got melted.

Since I have no real knowledge, I can speculate about some future tech, with detailed 3D scanning of NOS or straight donor car parts, 3D printing of low-volume dies, and then inexpensive (?) stamping of limited run panels. Sounds easy!

The dies were set up on a set of jackstands and rusted away...

These are actually some of the things we are doing now.

That's pretty well is what RD does now, except for the die is cut on a CNC mill.
One of the things that costs money when making a die is the hundreds of hours of hand polishing the die. The dies must be polished and perfect. RD can pump out the dies faster than they can polish them, any given day you can go to RD and there's at least a couple of dozen dies waiting to be polished.
All 3D printed objects I've seen, including the 3D printed Porsche pistons, stiĺl need machining or polishing. 3D metal printing tech (on this scale) isn't something that will be affordable for at least another 10- 20 years.

yes, very true, cnc milling was the last big practical breakthrough between computers and metal. along with laser cutting. really sped things up and went into the realm of super accuracy.

most of what i see as printed metal objects are quite crude as you note. i wonder about the metalurgical properties of printed metal?
perhaps a bit like printed concrete, which is basically a coiled

the japanese may be on to something at nissan. they are masters of steel, been making swords for thousands of years. the robot machine nissan made was for want of a better word massaging the steel. it was kind of pressing the steel into shape with a point contact on both sides. if you could feed in a scanned shape, theoretically its the kind of tech that might make the jump a bit like a laser cutter or a cnc machine.

Anyone who has watched the Porsche 3 d printed piston video won’t doubt the capability of 3D printed metal. Size might be an issue for body panels......

This is the panel fab technology I think you are referring to:

https://youtu.be/Jp8eylJ9ZMw

This was from Ford in 2013 using two hexapod robots in counter tension both having ball tipped styli.

On another note a Roeders VMC could cut steels dies that do not require hand polishing - they are a very top class CNC machine that are stiffer stronger sturdier than others and can cut so-called polished tools right off the machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpxP7d3QOn4

that video was great.
there you go, henry ford's spirit lives on.....
and you got to watch those J people right up your tail.
i can see that being a viable "cottage industry" tech.
just like going to the laser cutter 25 years ago with a CAD file.

got a link.
i am curious.
not a doubter, just still wondering how.
ie forging and all that stuff.
the germans are masters of steel too, so if they can do it, .....
when it comes to steel three countries count, the usa, japan and germany.
we used to make good steel here, but its all been shut down.
my old man was a top ticket welder trained by japanese ship builders.
so i am into this stuff, but not a welder or steel man myself.

in my game, construction, the printing stuff is just total bs.
its so bad at this stage.

I started my career in a tool and die shop. It's a dying art here in US.

I will.

Big difference between producing a piston and a stamping die set that withstands 100 or more tons of stamping force. BTW - 100 ton is a baby press. Modern Schuler presses are the size of a small house and can produce 3,000 ton force or more.

Dies are CNC milled on machines with 12-20 foot beds. It will be a long long time before you see 3D printing on that scale and with materials able to withstand those sorts of press forces.

https://www.schulergroup.com/major/download...rmsysteme_e.pdf


The idea that 3D printers are a new idea or particularly high tech is bunk . Stereolithography dates back to 1980s. Printing 3D parts from metal is newer (late 90's - early 2000) but still omits how much work is required after the "printing" is done.

I'll add another intersting one. Bugatti titanium brake caliper.

https://www.bugatti.com/media/news/2018/wor...om-3-d-printer/

It is very impressive but . . . .

Buried from deep within the Bugatti Press Release:

"It takes a total of 45 hours to print a brake caliper. . . . . Heat treatment is carried out in a furnace where the brake caliper is exposed to an initial temperature of 700°C, falling to 100°C in the course of the process, in order to eliminate residual stress and to ensure dimensional stability. Finally, the supporting structures are removed and the component is separated from the tray. In the next production stage, the surface is smoothed in a combined mechanical, physical and chemical process which drastically improves its fatigue strength, i.e. the long-term durability of the component in later vehicle operation. Finally, the contours of functional surfaces, such as the piston contact surfaces or threads, are machined in a five-axis milling machine which takes another 11 hours to complete its work. "

So although the 3D printed parts are very cool, it's not like this process out finished parts or that it will be used for affordable, high volume prodution parts any time soon.

While possible to use direct laser sintering to "print really cool stuff" it's not at the place that it's good for production (cost effective). For prototyping it's invaluable. We have printed parts and tools to check fits before production and in proof of concept. Great for making one offs.

If you look at the technology it is even more exciting as it develops. It is possible to manipulate electrons and as the level gets smaller and more efficient it will apply to materials. Imagine being able to "print" new materials at an atomic level.

Anyone remember the Star Trek movie where they "replicated" clear aluminum for the whale tank? We may see this in our lifetime.

If you do a little more research you'll find out Porsche wants $500K for a set of pistons. Not a typo.

Just like the Ford and etc tech, the machines are multi-million dollar technology, no cottage industry can afford this and any business that can will be looking for way more lucrative markets. Like any new tech you're looking at 20 years before the cost of these machines become affordable for even medium sized businesses.

Also 3D printing takes a comparitivly long time, a press can pop out a hundred fenders before you finish printing one.

The tech is cool, incredible pace of improvement, right now great for many smaller things, but to me it's still in it's formative (expensive) stages for larger items.

Transparent Aluminum. Come on Man!

Transparent Aluminum already exists....


From Wikipedia...

Aluminium oxynitride (marketed under the name ALON by Surmet Corporation[3]) is a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. ALON is optically transparent (≥ 80%) in the near-ultraviolet, visible and midwave-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is four times as hard as fused silica glass, 85% as hard as sapphire, and nearly 115% as hard as magnesium aluminate spinel. Since it has a cubic spinel structure, it can be fabricated to transparent windows, plates, domes, rods, tubes and other forms using conventional ceramic powder processing techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

all true at present.

depends what it costs for such a machine 20 years down the road in the end and how broad its application is.

500K for a set of pistons kind of confirms my doubts on whether some of this stuff replaces trad production methods for certain materials.
certainly in my industry big claims are made for "the future" right now.
but i'm not seeing it yet. nothing comes straight from the modelling CAD files out the end of a "printer" just yet.

i've not heard of transparent aluminium, sounds interesting.
i have seen transparent concrete. its pretty good. its more translucent than really transparent.

Apparently it was made in 2009. I'm getting old

https://youtu.be/xaVgRj2e5_s

Once we get to the industrial size Star Trek replicator all the fun will be gone. Just download the program for a 914 with any specs you like, and then push a button.

you will have to find a new hobby for mucking about in the shed.

Of course it does. Scotty gave the guy the formula in the 1980's.

BMW does mass produced 3D printing of parts for some of its cars. I8 bracket is one example.

https://3dprint.com/222268/bmw-3d-printed-roof-bracket/

john

This is great. I originally wondered what happened to the tooling used to create the 914 and we got Scotty sintering transparent aluminum. I was expecting a dusty warehouse and got a chance to beam me to Germany. You guys rock.

I would find the temptation of stamping new panels irresistible... with stainless!

Speaking of the Heritage MG parts, I had an MGB for years, I drove it one day to the supermarket and when the carry out put the bags in the trunk she dented the trunk trying to close it. She insisted I wait until her manager came out and I pulled the Moss Motors catalog out and the manager said he’d order me a new trunk. I. Still see that manager and he gives me crap about the decade or so of catalogs he got at the store after ordering the lid!