How to collect cars for passenger trains

There is such a Tver Carriage Works. Tomorrow is his birthday. So here I will tell something interesting about the plant itself.



This is the plant whose passengers passengers take for German. This is the same plant where sheet metal comes in at the entrance, and the output is a car with all subsystems, including a control panel with firmware. It employs about 8 thousand people, it is the largest enterprise in the Tver region, and seagulls live here, because they are warm in some buildings.

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If you think that a car is a very simple thing, then I recommend returning to the post about passenger car subsystems . Everything is there - from the local network to the electric doors. And all this must be collected.



Let's start the tour.



The plant occupies 93 hectares. These are the two Vaticans.







The first thing that can be seen is how the cars from one workshop are sent to another by rail:







Or not. The first is that the railway enters the factory. In production workshops, metal is unloaded from cargo platforms and sent for further processing:







Here is how it looks (this photo and above with a panorama of the plant S. Bogdanov, an employee of TVZ):







Full cycle - sheets of steel come in, cars leave:











The plant uses a lean manufacturing system, so everything is organized so that the necessary details are always at hand. A special marking was made on the floor in the production workshops: designated pedestrian areas, storage areas for finished parts, equipment locations, etc.







Here is a horizontal stretching machine, where the frame is made for the roof of the car:







And facing the car roof arcs:







It turns out such a thing:







To make something more complicated from metal, at the initial stage of blank production, you first need to cut this very metal and bend it well:







Thick billet is cut on the installation of plasma cutting:











More thin preparations are cut on the laser:











Some need to put in the press. Here are fixing his snap:







Here you can make a film about Fallout:











Here are the elements of the future car:







Workers receive rewards for improvements. Everywhere there are stands with information and examples:











Quote from the press release:

“In the first quarter of 2018, the inventors and rationalizers of the Tver Carriage Works saved the company almost 1.5 million rubles. From January to March, 105 proposals were submitted to the competition, 43 of them have already been put into production. Most of the rationalization ideas are aimed at saving material and labor resources, at improving working conditions, product quality and work performed.

There is a chat between shifts:







Next in the shop there is a place where special equipment (coordinate-hole punch press) makes perforated sheets (this will be the ventilation of the car):







And right next to the installation, which in a minute is able to make all these holes in one piece with insane speed, one of the oldest machines of the plant:







Gravity here cranes on the ceiling system:







In this workshop, the cranes are controlled from the floor with such remotes:











A press bangs along and new parts for the future of the car are obtained:







Another part of things is cast - there is an own foundry where the cast iron enters, and then the necessary parts are formed from it. But in fact, there are still not very many cast parts in the car (photo by S. Bogdanov):







Go ahead. Now - the assembly of this designer and welding!







We take the gofrolist from the first workshop, attach large parts to it, and the framework begins to emerge:







Something is welded by hand:











Something is a robot:







Here is such a hand:











And now you can see how the car body starts to turn out:











More and more:











By the way, the first series of Portal type machines was born here. Now they are applied all over the world.











The parts at different production sites are joined to it again and again. They come immediately in sets on the car:











Different cars have different roofs. But whenever possible, designers try to use elements from other cars in new ones: this is convenient for unifying production.







Here is a big detail - the boiler :







It is, of course, worth moving the crane:







Now you need to align the plane:







Here are the tracks, where you have to go again, the marks are applied directly on the car with a marker:







The car set for temporary - technological - carts:







Then painted in a powder coating chamber. He becomes like this:







Sheathed with insulation:











Add body sheathing:







By the way, both the insulation and the tree are disgustingly burning. Mineral insulation material, wood treated by impregnation. Modern cars burn badly, but we still will reach fire tests.



With the head cars of electric trains, the assembly process is complicated:











Then you need to lay the floor covering:







Mount partitions (we are now going to big jumps, a lot of small operations):







Add engineering subsystems:















Bring furniture:















And at the end to put the equipment:















Where does all this come from? Most often - produced in another place of the plant. Here, for example, work with plastic:











Modern structural material of cellular structure, lightweight and durable. But still, there is a lot of wood where it is still indispensable for the combination of "price - effect":







Next make furniture for the coupe:















Wheelsets? Here they are still rolling out of one workshop:







About all-all-all, you can read the documentation:







You can see where, with which car and what they do:







At the end of the assembly, the car is waiting for acceptance tests, since for cars there is a GOST and many more standards. What they do:

• Electrical testing. This is the dielectric strength of the insulation and test equipment. Insulation resistance - test breakdown is checked. More subsystems are powered from all current sources - the generator, the converter and the main.
• Climatics. First, ventilation is measured for compliance with the modes, then heating and cooling. Next, the conditioning mode is set and the car is driven into the heat chamber. This is a sealed place where the upper limit of the operating temperature is +50 degrees. The task of the car - to cope and hold the set point (22 or 24 degrees) inside.
• Brake tests are done on the stand stationary and in the process of running. Air tightness and actuation of electropneumatics are permanently checked.
• Running tests - full range. A train of at least 6 cars is driving, road performance is measured by grinding the carts with a body, coupling devices, electrical equipment. Efficiency is confirmed.
• Fire tests are not carried out with each car (it would be expensive to burn them upon acceptance). A mockup is being made that is being tried to burn. End walls must comply with GOST, partitions. Chairs and shelves should not produce toxic combustion products, and so on. Among other things, an accredited test center is sure to burn every new chair in the camera with mice. The task of the mice is to survive. The task of the chair is to burn so that they survive.

In general, this is part of the certification tests to confirm the safety requirements for 184-FZ. Each process is confirmed by a certificate, and then the cars go into a series of these agreed processes.



There are evacuation tests: for a certain time it is necessary to evacuate - break the glass, clean the opening, throw a blanket, get out of the car. Determine the time of evacuation. There are explosive tests: the battery box must be explosion-proof. Explosives are called, they set a charge similar to the maximum destructive force from a battery explosion. Boxing is deformed, but remains intact, the front panel flips out, the blast wave goes sideways from the car, and battery fragments fly there. The car passes many tests - for example, even for a collision.



Sometimes during testing with cars something happens. If something is wrong, return for revision. But on the trials themselves, this happens extremely rarely, since more often the car is returned from commissioning (this is something like alpha testing).







After testing, the car gets on the way near the factory and it remains to wait for the conductor. His future owner arrives, settles inside the car and tries to check everything as accurately as possible. Then he leaves right on this car in a big life. The car is rented as ready as possible - with a showcase for cookies, a microwave and everything.



Similarly, you can make a tram:







Only the tram will not have a conductor.

About factory

August 25, the company celebrates 120 years. Long ago it was a private enterprise of the French, who made cars for the king. Then they sold it to the guys who transferred the business from Riga, then the plant was nationalized and began to produce what worked. In wartime it turned out basically this:







At the beginning of the war, it was completely destroyed (the territory was seized by the Germans, a few hours before their onset, everything that could not be evacuated was destroyed). Then, after the liberation of the city, the plant was restored, and in the 90s he almost went bankrupt again - there were no orders. Nowadays TVZ is a world-class machine-building enterprise and makes passenger cars for customers from all over the CIS.



There are customers. Now, in 2018, the plant again feels stable. This is evidenced by the fact that before the whole team vacation was given in August. Now for the first time in 9 years, when it is impossible to take and stop production. Orders are scheduled for next year.



Wandering around the plant, we did not touch on the engineering histories of development and design (about them a little later), we ran very little through the life of the workers (for example, there are 4 canteens).







Not discussed the legacy of the USSR:











And much more. It should be said that hearing impaired people (about 40 people) work in the noisy workshops: they are quite comfortable there. There is a separate children's camp for the children of employees, there is a sanatorium, there are sports clubs, there is a lot of things. There is a radio inside the plant and a newspaper with a circulation of 4 thousand copies (more circulation than the largest regional edition).



But, I think, so far it has been possible to show the main thing - how a car is made out of nothing.