The Italian mechanical engineering company Idra, recently known as a supplier of modern Tesla production technology, is responsible for the assembly demonstrated one of his Giga presses. Despite the related name, they weren’t especially developed for Gigafactorys, but Tesla appears to be the first customer for the giant die-casting machines, and a big one: According to a report, twelve of them have been ordered so far – they could even all be for Tesla.
Eight Giga presses for Tesla Gigafactory in Germany
The construction of the Giga press can be seen in fast motion in a short video, published in the channel of the machine magazine FoundryPlanet. An article about this describes a visit to Idra in Italy, which contains some already known technical data, but also at least one interesting new piece of information: a total of twelve orders for the huge Idra machines are to be received.
The name Tesla is not mentioned once in the article, but it seems clear who the customer is for whom the Giga press shown in the video is being set up on a test basis. According to the very recent Wikipedia entry on Idra, the first two machines from Italy were installed at Tesla’s Fremont plant this summer. Three more are to be seen in photos in the Tesla report for the second quarter of 2020 in the Chinese Gigafactory.
Other Giga Press machines have also been spotted in the Shanghai Gigafactory. But unlike the IDRA unit, the machines in the Chinese plant appear to be manufactured by LK Machinery, the parent company of IDRA. The latter was spotted during a factory tour in early 2020.
If Idra doesn’t have another unknown customer for this giant press, that could mean that one of the machines for the German Gigafactory could already be seen in the assembly video. According to the FoundryPlanet report, it is now to be dismantled again and then distributed among 24 trucks to “go on a long journey” – the destination is not mentioned. And Giga-Presse number 4 is already well prepared.
