Why not? A properly set up CNC machining center would turn those out by the bucketload. That's precisely the sort of thing that BMW does regularly with exterior details, no reason why they couldn't do it for a batch of bolts.
You don't use CNC for making a billion individual screws. These would have their heads formed by being stamped in a die, just like phillips, robertson, security torx or any other screw heads.
Not for a billion. But especially for these it makes perfect sense, and given the details on the screw there is no doubt that it was made in exactly that way. The head was first milled and then there seems to have been a wire brush pass afterwards which got most but not all of the mill marks.
You can make anything on anything. Doesn't make it smart tho.
If this were a production run of a few dozen super high grade aerospace donkey dicks with five shoulders and four pockets, an oil channel, a precisely engineered break point and a 12-step heat treat process I'd say yeah, make it on your Swiss lathe with live tooling or bajillion axis VMC or whatever.
But this looks to be a simple small, probably cosmetic or otherwise low-ish strength stainless or chromed fastener that BMW probably wants a few hundred thousand of. You'll be time, money, labor, frustration, managerial nitpicking, just about everything, ahead to just have the fastener industry and their existing expertise make it for you. The "bespoke" drive, the custom branding, those are all known-knowns to those guys. They'll whip up tooling for their screw machines and fill the same bucket in 1/20th of the time.
Edit: replaced video link with better one. Obviously there's fiddle fucking around they're not showing and they're mix and matching footage of different products but the speed things move once you've got it all set up is broadly accurate. A whole bunch of these steps would be skipped or altered for a stainless fastener.
I know how just about every fastener is made. I also know how to look for toolmarks on the work product and I guarantee you that the bolt in TFA was made by machining rather than by stamping. Because this is a marketing instrument, not just a fastener.
I'd be unsurprised if they photographed a the pre-production one that was milled. They will almost certainly not be making the bulk of them that way. It just doesn't make sense in any way. At minimum order qualities in the tens of thousands (which they will certainly exceed) it makes sense to sub out to specialists.
Nearly zero chance of them doing that at production volumes though.
Why not? A properly set up CNC machining center would turn those out by the bucketload. That's precisely the sort of thing that BMW does regularly with exterior details, no reason why they couldn't do it for a batch of bolts.
You don't use CNC for making a billion individual screws. These would have their heads formed by being stamped in a die, just like phillips, robertson, security torx or any other screw heads.
Not for a billion. But especially for these it makes perfect sense, and given the details on the screw there is no doubt that it was made in exactly that way. The head was first milled and then there seems to have been a wire brush pass afterwards which got most but not all of the mill marks.
I'm not quite sure how you'd wire brush pass the pockets, and for a functional screw it doesn't make much sense anyway.
Mind this is a screw for a press release macro photo. I doubt they're going to put the same effort into making them at scale.
You can make anything on anything. Doesn't make it smart tho.
If this were a production run of a few dozen super high grade aerospace donkey dicks with five shoulders and four pockets, an oil channel, a precisely engineered break point and a 12-step heat treat process I'd say yeah, make it on your Swiss lathe with live tooling or bajillion axis VMC or whatever.
But this looks to be a simple small, probably cosmetic or otherwise low-ish strength stainless or chromed fastener that BMW probably wants a few hundred thousand of. You'll be time, money, labor, frustration, managerial nitpicking, just about everything, ahead to just have the fastener industry and their existing expertise make it for you. The "bespoke" drive, the custom branding, those are all known-knowns to those guys. They'll whip up tooling for their screw machines and fill the same bucket in 1/20th of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJvQZko8uiU
Edit: replaced video link with better one. Obviously there's fiddle fucking around they're not showing and they're mix and matching footage of different products but the speed things move once you've got it all set up is broadly accurate. A whole bunch of these steps would be skipped or altered for a stainless fastener.
I know how just about every fastener is made. I also know how to look for toolmarks on the work product and I guarantee you that the bolt in TFA was made by machining rather than by stamping. Because this is a marketing instrument, not just a fastener.
I'd be unsurprised if they photographed a the pre-production one that was milled. They will almost certainly not be making the bulk of them that way. It just doesn't make sense in any way. At minimum order qualities in the tens of thousands (which they will certainly exceed) it makes sense to sub out to specialists.