We make and weld the steel components we punch out of sheet metal, battery side plates and housing and stuff.
But we can retool to make any other number of steel components if they refit the presses with different die sets. I for instance operate a welding press and weld nuts onto different structural parts that are punched with the bigger presses.
We could totally retool for missiles or drones or military transport if they decided the battery thing isn’t working out.
shalafi@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
You might be surprised. Singer made some 1911s during WWII. Singer, the sewing machine company.
fullsquare@awful.systems 20 hours ago
yeah and german toy makers were critical in supplying parts for arty fuzes in ww1. (i heard that soviet milk bottle filling machines could be repurposed for filling shells with molten explosives - both are dispensed hot, size is similar, not sure how real it is). company making complicated machinery out of many parts, requiring tight tolerances, made on-site, that already has tooling to make most of gun parts probably except barrels, makes sense that it could be pressed to make simple handguns.
so what. manufacturing got much more specialized, so that even if in past car factory could crank out entire tanks, they probably can’t do it today easily (parts, sure, even entire engines and transmissions. not armor plate, or ceramics, or tungsten inserts or whatever these have). that factory could make stamped steel parts of jdam, but probably not much more. mk80 series shells are basically 30cm-ish wide, 1cm-ish thick steel tubes, with notches on inside and necked down while hot from both sides. can’t do that without highly specialized machinery