Brand new A hoods

[Vic Skirmants]

I'm going to be at Sebring, so should be safe.

[Ron LaDow]

I was curious about the 'lines' circled in this image:

Was the steel joined at those lines?

[Mike DeJonge]

that is just from poor lighting

[Mike DeJonge]

Hot out of the press this morning. A hood inner structure. The dies are a little tight so we will need to do a little tweaking to try and eliminate some of the wrinkles. This pc is made from 19 gauge galvaneal. We are trying to have some of these available for the swap meet in Hershey. We have some hood skins done, so we will work on getting these mated together properly so get a full hood. Finally this is coming together

[Mike DeJonge]

forgot to mention that obviously the pictured part will need to be trimmed before use. Once we have this done we will try to do some aluminum hoods and inner structures to make an aluminum hood.

[Mike DeJonge]

here you can see the inner hood die back in the press after some more hand sanding and polishing. The small metal strips you see are lengths of plumbers solder draped over the die. We will bring the top die down and go to full pressure and release, bringing the upper half of the die up,then measure each individual strip to check clearances. Much like using plasti-gauge to check clearances of main bearings in a motor when it is being re-assembled. If clearances are good we will do a trial press again.

[Mike DeJonge]

Here is a link to the inner hood structure being cut out on our 5-axis laser cutter.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL8HEsRKkrE

[Bob Forman]

That is science fiction! I guess the 356 has arrived at the space-age. Congratulations.

[Mike DeJonge]

laser cutting has been around for a few years. Very high tech. It is the way to go now, every part is cut out the same every time. No tired people to deal with.
pictured is the inner structure cut out, with backing plate and weld nuts welded to the latch area. Sold as a complete unit minus the hood hinge mounts part # P151AI

[Mike DeJonge]

Pictured is a corner of the inner hood structure. We will be selling these as a replacement for hoods that have been kinked. part # 151RC for the right corner and 151LC for the left corner. We are trying to present as many options as possible for the the person who is wanting to do the repair himself, instead of buying a complete hood.

[Mike DeJonge]

another pc that is available from the same die, for the A hoods is the front of the inner structure, to repair the front of the hood. this pc is specific to the A hoods. We are working on a small die which should enable us tp make the pc specific to the B hoods also

[Mike DeJonge]

We are now working on tooling to fold over and crimp the edge of the hood skin over top of the inner structure.
Also available will be the hood hinge mounting brackets #151H

all these parts will be at Hershey for viewing
thanks

[Jacques Lefriant]

Hi Mike
When in terms of qty does it become cost effective for the dies to trim the parts?
j

[Mike DeJonge]

the laser trimmer costs aprox $160.00 to run per hour or $2.60 per minute. It takes the laser 4.05 minutes to cut the inner structure from the stamping, so that is $10.79. It would take about an hour to trim by hand using several different shears, and more time to punch the holes. The biggest PLUS is that each pc is exactly the same and all the holes are in the same location. If we did not have the laser, another jig would have to be built to locate each hole for the hole punch, and that does not guarantee each hole is in the same place. We have already found that some holes in some parts were not located properly because of jigs being worn out or not placed over the part properly. We are working toward making each part the same, not matter if we make 100 or 1000. It all takes time to program and make sure each part is the same as what it is supposed to be. If dies had to be made to trim the parts it would make the cost of the parts prohibitive, we would have to sell 1000s. Tooling costs are very prohibitive and very time consuming to produce

[Mike DeJonge]

To answer the question specifically, it would have cost about $60000 to build a trim die just for the inner structure. We would have to sell about 5000 hoods to break even then. I don't think we would sell that many hoods in the next 10 years.
A trim die for the hood skin would have been less, but we can trim the hood skin from the stamping in a little more than 2 minutes.
Trim dies are for high production runs, it would not be cost effective for us for any of the parts we produce