Tesla’s New 9000 Ton Giga Press

Tesla's Giga Texas facility will soon be getting an upgrade in the form of a massive 9000 ton Giga Press, which arrived in Houston in late September.

Like the four other Giga Press machines already in use at the Texas plant, this new Press was made by the Italian fabrication company IDRA; and shipped in pieces to Texas. 

There's no word yet on when it will arrive at the factory in Austin, but once it does the press will be reconstructed and can begin calibration before it starts producing CyberTruck parts - which is what Tesla commissioned the new press for. This is the biggest machine of its kind in the world, so it will likely be casting the rear underbody which will support the truck bed - the largest part of the assembly.

Giga Presses fabricate whole pieces of vehicles by applying high pressure in a die-casting process. Once the press is closed, molten metal is injected into the vacuum-sealed molds with a high-speed plunger. Lubricants are used to allow for easy extraction, and the pieces are put into a quenching tank to cool by a robot after being removed. The open mold is then cooled and cleaned by robots before starting the whole process over again.

Most of Tesla's presses can put out about 6200 tones of force while casting parts. This new beast - which the IDRA was unsure it could even make - can put out over 9000 tons of force.

Most of Tesla's current presses currently make both the front and rear quarters of the Model Y frame - a job which previously took some 300 robots to do back when just the Model Y rear frame was made of over 70 pieces.

Eliminating all of that complexity is how Tesla has been ramping up production at their facilities. With this new mammoth press, Cyber Truck production won't have to go through this process, and can just move straight to simplified mass-production.

We can't wait to see videos of this press churning out Cyber Trucks.