Unknown the time frame. Not enough information. There are ‘off the shelf’ bending presses but that doesn’t mean they’d work. If something has to be designed and built for a particular use, like bending large, heavy, body side stainless steel panels - that’s not an off the shelf item, that’s custom order and build. That means extra time to design, validate, build and then validate again. Computer sims need to be run, hand trials, press programming, robotics, clamping, end of arm tooling etc... and then a lot of praying that something wasn’t missed and that you turn it on and it just works. Hint: it doesn’t just work, pretty much ever. So then there’s weeks to months more to getting it working to designed optimal speed.
None of this is ‘easy’, which is not to say it’s impossible. But it’s not drive to Walmart, get a cart and just grab things off shelves, voila done. Much of what Tesla is doing has never been done before. Even the aluminum body panels for their vehicles often have pushed the envelope of the formability of the material. Many panels on their vehicles have multiple directional curvature and very deep draws with tight radii. This is lost on most people. Now stainless panels and huge casting machines — bunch of crazies.
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