Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126773
Parts stack up in the sub-assembly section of the factory, which builds complete motorcycles and several automobile components. This computer-controlled machine turns a crankshaft forging into a finished part. Every bike off the assembly line is run on a rolling road before shipping; _. (right) a worker installs a crankshaft in a K100 engine. Workers walk with moving K100 engines. installing transmission housings and clutch assemblies. modernized, uses its bright work expertise for engine construction. Now fully automated, it takes the onepiece aluminum engine blocks and gives each bore a l20-micron surface of nickel and silicon. This first-ever bike bore to get the "Scanimet" Nikasil plating process is then honed to 38 microns and tested to great accuracy. Every now and then a "liner" is removed from a bore to measure the accuracy of the wall thickness. Gearboxes designed by BMW are made by Gertrag and are brought in fully built-up. Robots put on and tighten the nuts of the head an.d crankcase. Eventually it all goes together. It takes two hours in all. That is twice as long as it takes to build a Boxer twin but is the same as an equivalent four-cylinder car engine. Completed engines come off the mainly robotic production line every five and a half minutes and are then run. by an auxiliary motor to check with every seam welded by the book." Says Klaus Krawell, a master in BMW frame construction: "Manipulators and robots will have their day only when they can work as well as or better than humans." BMW reckons it would need a run of 30,000 bikes a year for each model before the Spandau works could be fully automated. Meanwhile, at the end of the production line, each ma.chine is taken off for a 2.5-mile test run - without leaving the factory. In 1971 they were tested along a special narrow closed-in track where one test rider tested the 35 production Boxers a day. Nowadays, the K-lOOs and Boxers finish at the test cell where two riders do 2.5-miles on each machine - on rollers. Each rider tests between 75 and 80 machines a day - 994 miles a week going nowhere! After that, robotics take over again. The tested bike is placed on a PEtHet friction and crank end-float, compression and oil pressure. Final assembly takes place along a moving I65-place automated C-frame ha~ar line. Each C-frame can be adjusted to suit the operator's height and twisted and turned through 3600 to save the operator stretching and bending. KIOO and flat twins come down the same time. Men are more economical than machines at making frame welds, but that too will eventually change. Most of the KIOO content such as forgings and castings come from Gerlach and some engine parts from BMW Munich. Frames are built at Berling-Reinickdendorf because of lack of space in Spandau. As BMW put it: "Welding manipulators (robots) are only slowly being introduced in this BMW subsidiary and the robot developed for the K I00 had not quite completed its apprenticeship. Thus, hand-welding still reigns here that is guided along a track to be first automatically sprayed with protective grease then completely shrunkplastic covered, sealed, boxed, addressed by computer and delivered to the storage bay ready to go 40 to a container. It may not be the most automated bike factory in Europe - Piaggio's Italian plant producing monocoque framed Vespa scooters has perhaps a bit more automation in frame building - but Spandau is certainly the most advanced. And it won't end there. Spandau boss Hans Glass told us. "We haven't yet reached the ultimate. More sophisticated technology will come - both in production techniques and in the bikes themselves. There will be more electronics, including anti-lock brakes like those currently used on cars, and more engine management systems. "~.e're going a long way from llere.. ~~~ ~~." .•. •• ~. ~ ..... 25.