Blackpool based sports car manufacturers TVR, the UK's largest independently owned car company, are employing Lincoln Electric's cutting edge welding technology for the manufacture of their exceptional new Speed 12 GT1 race car.
The Car's 7.7 Litre V12 engine boasts some very impressive statistics, producing up to 81 Obhp and propelling the car to over 200mph, but the most innovative feature is its method of fabrication. The engine is constructed from approximately 130 laser cut plate components, which are manually TIG welded together using Lincoln Electric's square wave TIG power sources.
The engines were designed in-house by John Ravenscroft in 1996, with TVR's Mike Smith undertaking all of the welding involved in the fabrication process. Mike estimates that each engine takes approximately 300 hours to construct, with another 100 hours of machining to complete. This novel method of manufacture is used due to the limited production run of the engine. It proves far more flexible if there need to be any changes to the design as there is no pattern work involved, the alterations go straight from the CAD design to the CNC machines.
The Lincoln Square wave TIG machines were chosen as they offer the facility to precisely manage the entire weld cycle, especially weld penetration, enabling effective welding of components of differing thickness. Mike, who has used Lincoln Equipment in the past commented, "The Lincoln machines give a very stable arc and they have dramatically reduced the levels of distortion in the fabrication process. We are very impressed with the performance of these machines, and after all, in our field performance is paramount."""
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