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This Tucker-Based Concept Shows the Future of Custom Bodywork
Sheet metal has been shaped with hand tools for many centuries. All the suits of shining armor knights wore in Medieval times were tediously hammered out by highly skilled technicians. In the last hundred years or so, we’ve developed more sophisticated tools that speed the process to a certain degree, and, because of extensive coverage on television and online, many people have seen machines like power hammers and English wheels in action. While there is no doubt that these machines ease the metalshaper’s task, making a complete body for a car, or even a replacement fender or door skin, is a laborious process; it takes a person years to become proficient at doing this kind of work.
We are at the beginning of a sea change in the way that technicians form sheetmetal panels. A new process called Digital Sheet Forming can work from a digital file and create a perfectly shaped metal part in around an hour. This will transform how rare cars are restored where original panels are non-existent, and it will come to the forefront for building low-production car bodies and even one-off designs.
Rob Ida Concepts in Morganville, New Jersey, has been in the custom auto business for generations. Rob Ida runs the business that his father Bob started, and Rob continues to expand the scope of what the shop can do now that his father has retired.
Rob Ida Concepts has built award-winning cars of many styles, from mild customization projects to fast race cars and wild scratch-built show-stopping creations. The Ida family has close connections to the short-lived Tucker Automotive Company; Rob’s grandfather had a Tucker dealership in New York, and Rob and his father have performed restorations on the few remaining Tucker cars. They’ve even tooled up to make complete reproduction Tuckers.
Just before his untimely death, company founder Preston Tucker drew up plans for a Tucker sports car called the Carioca. For a short time, he considered having this car manufactured in Brazil. (“Carioca” refers to a native of Rio de Janeiro.) This radical design never made it to the prototype stage, but Rob was so taken by this imaginative concept that he began to build a car matching Tucker’s vision as closely as possible.
While Rob is highly skilled in the traditional methods of metal fabrication, he immediately recognized the potential that Digital Sheet Forming had for his Carioca project. He put it to the test, and the results so far have been spectacular. Rob has partnered with the Desktop Metal Corporation in Burlington, Massachusetts, to make use of its Figur G15 machine to form the body panels for this ambitious project.
The Digital Sheet Forming process is simple. First, a digital file is created as a blueprint from which the machine will work. If an existing physical panel is available, it can be scanned to create the file. If starting from scratch, CAD software can render the digital file to define the required shape.
The machine, which costs around $500,000 and takes a great deal of fine-tuning to optimize for automotive work, moves a blunt-tipped stylus that is pressed against a piece of sheetmetal and backed by a urethane pad. The machine traces out the shape, layer by layer. It begins at the outer perimeter, then spirals in toward the center, going deeper with each pass. The machine can work on a sheet of metal as large as 63 inches by 47 inches, and it can form parts up to 15.7 inches deep. Several types of metal can be formed with this technology, including steel up to 14 gauge and aluminum up to 11 gauge.
Larger panels can be made by joining smaller pieces together, with few restrictions on the shapes produced. For some challenging shapes, the process may work better if the part is angled in the cavity of the machine. The software that runs the machine is optimized to position and form each part in the most efficient manner possible.
Digital Sheet Forming can dramatically reduce the number of hours it takes to build a panel or a complete body. We suspect it won’t be long until this process is more widely adopted in the automotive restoration and custom fabrication trade.
Quite interesting and promising. A lot of designers will be seeing their ideas produced more easily. I hope it won’t completely replace the ‘old school’ metal-working tradesmen and women, though. Those skills need to be preserved.
I agree absolutely! Use the new techniques but keep the old practices in play! Once those “old skills” are lost, they’re hard to bring back. I was taught metalwork by an old guy who died about 45 years ago. I’m 70 now and it’s getting physically harder for me to use the old methods. The knowledge has served me well, but it seems the “new” techs aren’t interested in learning it.
Recently retired sheet metal mechanic. Went from hand layout as an apprentice to laser plasma and water jet cutting tables. Pretty soon all they’ll need people for will be moving metal from machine to machine.
Incredible!
Any technology, analog or digital, that could conceivably reduce expense while improving symmetry, geometry, and dimensional accuracy of fabricated panels is a major win for all of us in Automotive Culture. I see “one-offs” or restorations being created in substantially reduced time frames and cost. Bravo for expanding creative new tools.
Being a car who came through the construction industry. Having very limited metal working skills, but could make you anything from wood, I am appalled. It is another modern miracle removing the soul from human creativity. I know you can’t stop progress,, nor do I want to. It just seems that the world is becoming a place where people are just enabling machines. Sure some will use this to great effect. As with all technology. But we don’t take a moment to think of who and what we are loosing. I don’t even begin to have a answer. But our lives are just turning into “Magic” that few or none understand.
I don’t see anything here replacing creativity!
A person does the design, another plans the construction, a dumb machine does the bullwork.
Using your logic, carpenters would not be allowed to use a power hammer or stapler to create a house from automated plans, nor would lumber mills be allowed to use automated saws to make 2×4’s.
It’s ironic that this article should surface right after Gene Winfield’s passing.
I can see both sides of the argument, so to speak, on this metal-forming development – but I’ll reserve my highest respect for the artists who can do this with their own eyes and hands.
This is a fascinating technology. This can really help manufacture hard to come by parts. I would love to see the Tucker concept in person someday.
If Tucker was around now he would be “gigapressing” his sedan in only 2 or three pieces.
Looks like a great resource for making hard to form panels for low production vehicles!
Can you download the code for replacement panels or will that run into a copyright issue?
I have dreamt about this for many years so it’s great to see it finally coming into existence. In my conception, it becomes possible to take original auto bodies and rethink how they work as a whole making them stronger and safer. In addition to the formative approach of the Figur G15 one can imagine both additive and subtractive methods controlled digitally. There is much more to be done.
Looks like the perfect process for replacement body parts! If you have one of these machines you can have a catalog of files and roll out fenders to order! No need for a big warehouse of parts! Sort of like print on demand for books…