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Tesla is facing issues with the bare metal construction of the Cybertruck, which Elon Musk warned was as tricky to do as making Lego bricks

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[-] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 120 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy.​"

LOL

Yeah ok.

Tell me you know nothing about manufacturing, without telling me you know nothing about manufacturing.

That one quote - assuming it is accurate - explains that Musk is even more of an idiot than everyone already knew he was. You don't make things at those tight tolerances. A couple of dimensions on a part might be (for instance the bore on a press fit sleeve), but you'd almost never, ever hold an entire part to that tight of a tolerance.

In imperial units, 10 microns is .00039". A human hair is roughly .001 to .005" thick. So he is asking for a tolerance that is 3 to 10x smaller than the thickness of a human hair. To put the absurdity of Musk's demand into perspective, most parts that go into a car are roughly an order of magnitude looser in tolerance with some dimensions being 2 orders of magnitude looser.

That difference might not sound like a lot, but holding something to +/-.0039 versus +/-.00039" could easily triple the price of an item or more. Easy. You use a tight tolerance only when you need to - that's engineering 101. Some parts could easily be +/- .039" and not affect their performance on bit. Close tolerance engine parts might be held at what Musk is demanding, but never "ALL PARTS" would be held to that.

[-] Nilz@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 year ago

I work in semiconductor industry where machines need to have sub-micron positioning accuracy and even we don't generally design parts with 10 micron tolerances, unless it really needs to.

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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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