The BBC has a fantastic, 3-minute clip touring a frozen pizza factory that manufactures 2 million pizzas a week. There's something about precision, large-scale automation, even when the technology isn't necessary cutting edge, that's even more telling of our technological place in the world than sleek touchscreen phones and GPS navigators. Notice the eerie lack of humans, the cold airshot of sauce onto crust and the phallic towers of pepperoni being diced to scraps by machines. Has Man sold his soul to the robots so soon? And just for some crappy frozen pizzas? [BBC via MAKE]

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Japanese textile maker Toray Industries is on the road to mass producing carbon fibre cars, bringing us ever closer to the day when the lightweight automobiles are on the market for more than just really rich racing enthusiasts. The company said it's developed a new carbon fibre processing method that moulds auto platforms in 10 minutes. That's two and a half hours shorter than what current methods allow.

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In light of the news about the updated construction process for the new MacBooks, it is high time you got a brief edumication on the history of unibody construction. It may seem revolutionary, but the method Apple is using derives from the early 20th century monocoque ("single shell") technique of using an object's external skin to support structural loads. It has its roots in the airline industry where a price drop in aluminium in the 1920's made it affordable to meet the demand for stiff, strong, smooth skins that could handle the stress of high altitudes and increasingly powerful aircraft. By the end of WWII, almost all high-performance aircraft were built using monocoque or semi-monocoque technique.

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Given the recent rumours about a "revolutionary" new manufacturing process from Apple involving water jet-cut aluminium for new MacBooks, it seemed appropriate to discuss a new product coming out of the 2008 Fabtech International & AWS Welding show. The FLOW is a 6-axis system that perform full 3D water cutting without a bulky gantry holding it back. Instead, the entire system runs off a flexible robotic arm for more precision work (although its accuracy has been described as "mid range"). Either way, it looks like the FLOW 6 will be used to fabricate some awesome stuff down the line. [AVING via Slashgear]

9to5 Mac has gone on record as saying that the rumoured Apple Brick isn't a product, but a manufacturing process that can make high quality aluminium shells. The "brick" part comes in because the supposed technique carves these MacBook casings with lasers and high pressure water jets out of bricks of aluminium, making for a seamless and screwless design. Whether or not it's true is still left to be seen, but one benefit would mean that there would be no need to bend metal (which creates weak spots). Again, no idea if this is legit, but 9 to 5 Mac has a fairly decent track record, which they conveniently point out at the end of their post. [9 to 5 Mac]

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Dell is restructuring their production in a massive overhaul that will send the entire manufacturing process overseas. According to one insider's account, most or all of Dell's factories, which are based in the US, will be sold off in 18 months.

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Business Week is citing an internal Apple source today who is hinting at the company's upcoming manufacturing plans for the 3G, and they're huge--between 40 and 45 million phones by this time next year kind of huge. The numbers are necessary, obviously, to cover for the impending Best Buy availability and the additional 20 countries that make up the second phase of the international launch starting today (with over 70 launches eventually, China rumoured to be among them). But, wow. How about some perspective?

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Late last month iSuppli, the authority on gadget teardowns, released a virtual teardown estimate that the 8GB iPhone 3G cost US$173 to manufacture--only a hair away from the figure of US$174.33 they have arrived at as their official estimate. This figure does not include additional costs like software development, shipping and distribution, packaging and miscellaneous accessories included with each phone. However, it does represent nearly a US$52 drop over the cost of the original 8GB iPhone. [iSuppli]

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Today's list from OObject features a collection of 10 videos focusing on German car factories. Why? Because they are gadgety, first and foremost--but the architecture of the factories is significant as well. In other words, German car manufacturers are realizing a vision where both the product and the factory are an integrated work of art. Examples include the VW factory in Wolfsburg that features 200 foot tall robotic silos at the end of the production line and an eco-friendly VW assembly plant in Dresden that is transparent and sits right centre of the city. German engineering at it's finest folks. [OObject]