How Formula 1 Pistons Are Made (I went to the factory)

📺 Watch more Driver61 here:

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Why F1 Wheel Nuts Cost £50'000

A single F1 piston, including it’s development and manufacture can cost over £50,000.

There’s no doubt, they’re incredible engineering - but I wanted to understand more about how they’re made, so I went to Cosworth to understand the life of a piston - from design, all the way to the dyno - and every step in between - and it genuinely was one of the most interesting days I’ve ever had.

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[johngoodwin]

A recently retired Mahle Motorsports employee, I really enjoyed this video. Cosworth is a very capable outfit 🏁

[blusofa]

This is half of why I am so drawn to F1, the remarkable engineering

[Mart]

Crazy what engineers can do when they have been given simple task of "make the best piston you can"

[socas_nic]

Good old fashioned YouTube is back!? Straight to the point video

[Gamertrix]

Having been fortunate enough to do a factory tour at Cosworth, it was amazing to see the steps taken from start to finish. A lot of which are not covered here. These guys are the peak of the industry. The real good stuff cameras are not allowed anywhere near.

[naws_music]

really nice to watch this - brought back memories of my days starting as a graduate engineer with Cosworth in 1999. 5 amazing years @Cosworth

[TheSmokeofAnubis]

Absolute dream job to be building engines for Cosworth... I'm old now at 43, so kids.. don't waste your school days as I did.

[pgr]

THE most successful F1 engine. Cosworth DFV. Twelve times an F1 driver had a DFV at their backs when winning a title. Units progressively developed proved competitive from 1968 until 1982, when the turbocharged engines had finally started to become more reliable and performant.

[ZeroFox]

I miss working on a DMG Mori DMU 50. I got excited that you referenced the same machine that I worked on at my first machining job!

[djmips]

Bee stress reliever at 0:35 shows how intense CAD designing an F1 piston must get!

[RobinP]

This was fascinating! Seriously, by the title and past videos on other channels I thought that this would be a factory tour kind of thing. I could watch machine tools and their operators all day.

[waldemarb.]

Fantastic! Thank you. It was also nice seeing all the normal, non-tagged and pierced young people.

[muskelkater]

Thats almost exactly what i do everyday 😳 (with medical parts).
CAM programming… get that shit working… then getting it accurate… tight tolerances selfcontrol via programmed probe… tool breakage management…. Getting the pallet loader ready… and hope that i dont need to call the service at the next monday morning 😅
(sorry for possible mistakes in my pronunciation... german here 🤷‍♂️)
(Just read it with an heavy german accent 😂)

[harryj]

I worked for Porsche factory team during the 919 programme and all of the machines we used for manufacturing were DMG Mori. The capabilities of modern manufacturing is simply mind boggling. I remember having an SS pin for a clevice on the car manufactured, this pin was 43.4mm long and 2.04mm wide with a ball on either end and it within 1 micron.

[TordenPSM]

I’ve worked in both F1 as engineering, (using Siemens NX and Solidworks) and programming mazak twin turret cnc lathes, and also for Martin Baker making parts for the Ejection seats used in airforce jets, and the manufacture processes are almost identical.
What some may not realise is, in F1 there is a ZERO acceptance for any tolerance deviation, whereas in Ejector seats, there’s a lot more scope! The other side of the story is, F1 teams are happy to pay ridiculous amounts of money for the most simplest things, yet military contracts want to save money on everything!!

[wilburt]

Last time i remember MMC pistons being used was in the V10 era. Honda used them in 2004 and 2005 seasons.Their aluminium piston in 2003 weighed 251g, then 2004-2005 seasons their MMC pistons weighed between 210g to 226g. A 40 to 25g saving is around a 10% saving!

[cyclenut]

I worked for an aerospace company that built the turbine blades for jet engines. I ran a CMM machine and the tolerances at machining division were sometimes +/- 0.0015 of inch. We worked with single crystal castings that the entire blade was one crystal top to bottom. The machining cos worth is doing is similar to aerospace jet engines. What an interesting place to work! Great video, brings back some good memories and I learned a thing or two about F1.

[bolt]

I bought a set of these at Auto Zone for my '72 Pinto Wagon. Huge improvement.

[DIOSpeedDemon]

THe engines themselves, just looking at them, are Works of Art. Man can build Incredible things..

[brunonikodemski]

Not sure about the comments below, that Aluminium and Beryllium mix well, as an alloy. Our company did some of this for Space applications, and there was a problem with the thermal expansion rates of the various crystallites, within the matrix. As a result, after very heavy thermal cycling, there became zipper faults, and delaminations within the materials, which could not be repaired during the repressurization cycles. As such, these materials will have a defined cycling life, at or over their thermal cycling regimen. Beryllium moves very little, Aluminium moves a lot, and does not recover if strained to crushing (especially in oxygen atmosphere). Inside the piston, that may not be a problem, but just the atomic bonding dimensions seem to be against this. Somebody probably compared the atomic weights, and decided that an alloy would be lighter. Why NOT make Aluminium and Lithium pistons, like they do for airframes and spacecrafts. I'd like to see some F1 cars using AL/LI pistons as a test. Would they melt into failure after 10-miles, or not. Active cooling could be used.