Many years back, my folks purchased their inaugural non-General Motors vehicle: a 1990 Honda Accord with a manual gearbox. My mother later handed this car over to my sibling, who held onto it for an extensive period until it finally stopped being used. As per recollections from conversations with Dad, one of his favorite aspects about the Accord was that it was manufactured in the U.S., thus backing American production.
Many years back, my folks purchased their inaugural non-General Motors vehicle: a 1990 Honda Accord with a stick shift. My mother later handed this car over to my sister, who held onto it for quite some time until it finally stopped being used regularly. I recall my father mentioning how much he appreciated that it was assembled in the U.S., which helped support workers in Ohio.
Currently, the Marysville, Ohio facility (as well as its neighboring plants in Anna and East Liberty) is undergoing a significant overhaul costing around $1 billion. Through this modernization of the production sites, Honda aims to manufacture vehicles powered by traditional internal combustion engines, hybrid electric systems, and batteries.
electric vehicles
On these very assembly lines, this ultimately introduces an extra degree of adaptability into the automobile manufacturer’s procedures, allowing them to modify each section upward or downward according to requirements.
Honda’s innovative “slim, lightweight, and smart” approach is now being implemented in Ohio. The initial model set to roll out from this new assembly line will be Acura’s upcoming electric RSX SUV later this year, succeeded by the manufacturing versions of the prototype.
0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV concepts debuted at CES
In January, among various initial achievements, the firm has implemented a novel lightweight yet robust welding technique. This advancement will enhance all vehicles produced here.
Reducing the welding current for enhanced fusion
Fifty years ago, Honda introduced its famous Gold Wing touring motorcycle in Japan. Shortly after, they shifted manufacturing to their facility in Marysville, which has continued to expand from the time the first Accord sedans started coming off the assembly line at the end of 1982.
By 2025, Honda has set its sights on achieving the ambitious target of making all of its vehicle sales completely free from emissions by 2040. Concurrently, similar to its competitor Toyota, Honda is also preparing backup plans involving internal combustion engines (ICEs) and hybrid technologies to cater to market demands and boost overall efficiency.
Through employing an exclusive welding method dubbed CDC by Honda—short for “constant DC chopping”—the company asserts that they are merging two distinct technologies. One of these techniques preserves a particular waveform featuring a strong peak current, while the other manages heat consistency by adjusting the pause duration automatically. Essentially, Honda has integrated the superior qualities of traditional DC and AC welding approaches to achieve improved outcomes.
Tim Leopold, a seasoned 40-year employee at Honda, is spearheading the overhaul of the Marysville Auto Plant, which employs over 4,000 workers. According to him, this specific welding technique is unprecedented both within this facility and across all global Honda operations. This approach has never been implemented elsewhere in large-scale production by the company.
He clarifies that every type of spot welding process necessitates both an electric current and heat to form a nugget that bonds the metals together.
There isn’t actually a bead involved; instead, you’re basically clamping metals together using what’s known as a weld gun,” Leopold explains further. “It functions much like a clamp where you compress the metal to remove any air pockets and subsequently apply an electric current between both ends of the welding tips.
Through “chopping” the current via the CDC technique, technicians gain better control over the nugget temperature compared to traditional DC welding methods. Although the old process isn’t flawed per se, according to Leopold, it poses significant challenges when joining different metal thicknesses. This difficulty escalates further when attempting to fuse multiple varying thickness metals in a specific sequence, as seen in Honda’s operations at their EV facility.
Leopold states that “traditional-style welding” rapidly consumes thin metals due to quicker heating but fails to achieve complete fusion into thick metals, resulting in weaker welds. To illustrate, when you have two layers of one-millimeter metal enclosing a three-millimeter layer, this setup demands a distinct welding technique compared to an even thickness configuration. Properly managing the weld nugget’s temperature is essential here; otherwise, techs might melt the thinner sections prematurely without achieving sufficient heat penetration required for the thicker section, according to Leopold.
Large casting machinery moves in.
A significant advancement for Honda in Ohio involves the introduction of six 6,000-ton mega-casting machines. These devices will handle casting, machining, and assembling battery casings at the Anna engine plant before transferring them to the nearby Marysville automobile assembly plant. Approximately one hour’s drive from this location, a brand-new battery factory has been inaugurated as part of this initiative. This battery plant is a joint venture between Honda and LG Energy Solution, with both parties investing $3.5 billion into the project. It is projected that the entire endeavor could amount to around $4.4 billion.
According to the
North American Die Casting Association
, the components molded using these large high-pressure machines will constitute the biggest partsHonda has ever manufactured. Upcoming Honda electric vehicles are anticipated to feature megacasting (also referred to as
gigacasting
as well as other sections such as the engine and body parts.
Mike Fischer, the executive chief engineer at Honda Development & Manufacturing of America, suggests that instead of constructing a brand-new facility for housing large machinery, they opted to conserve capital and adopt a multi-powertrain strategy. By incorporating advanced CDC welding techniques, consolidating assembly lines, and optimizing available space, Honda refers to this as their “rebirth” for the manufacturing sites in Ohio. I am eagerly anticipating seeing how things unfold with future developments.
Honda 0 Saloon
It seems like in the production version. We’ll know soon enough.
