Cheaply Made Chinese Garbage

[Eddyde]

Point is, they will make a product to what ever specs the purchaser wants. Even items that you think are the same, can vary widely in quality.

Companies like Harbor freight, order stuff by the truck/ boat load, When they are almost sold out, they order more maybe from the same place, maybe someone else. Quality from each order can, and does vary widely.
Buyer beware.

Yes it's their willingness to make junk to meet the price point of the buyer, because they have no ethic of quality. Try approaching most western manufacturers saying you want them to make something and you don't care how crappy it turns out or if it even works, as long as it is low cost, they would show you the door.

 

[mcostello]

HF sanding rolls are unglueing themselves in the packaging with any Human help.

 

[wrmiller]

Yes it's their willingness to make junk to meet the price point of the buyer, because they have no ethic of quality. Try approaching most western manufacturers saying you want them to make something and you don't care how crappy it turns out or if it even works, as long as it is low cost, they would show you the door.

Ah... Not any of the 'western' manufacturers I've worked (or work) for. Not sure which part of the multi-verse you live in though. I've bought plenty of junk stamped 'Made in USA'. The last was from Aloris.

 

[DentorP]

Ha ha 2 drops of wee came out I laughed that hard over the small 750 thou people!

Our nearest major center is 6 hours drive from me it has under 200k people. Our biggest city in our state is 12hours drive!
The prices are also double and our dollar is less than 3/4s. You are not alone.
stock pile your cash and order from the US in bulk. Or just cop the frieght costs and costs for decent equip where you have too. Every time i buy cheap it costs me more, every time the disappointment in the item and myself for buying it is more. I feel your pain.

Lucky me i don't live in Australia anymore, where machine tools like vises even locally made are expensive compared to US made tools nowadays in the States are cheaper than in Australia. Competition is the main ingredient i guess.

 

[Wreck™Wreck]

One may bash the Chinese manufacturers as much as one wants, however US consumers have created a market for such goods by demanding the lowest possible cost for every good that they buy from socks to hobby lathes. What did people here expect when a majority of consumers base their purchasing decisions on price alone?

 

[savarin]

Personally I'm fed up with the constant bashing of cheap Chinese products.
I expect I am like a large number of people in this "hobby" who have no way of purchasing or justifying the exorbitant prices of quality equipment and therefore would not be able to enter into this marvelous past-time that I have so recently discovered.
If you live close to areas where old stock is in plentiful supply then renovating those old "quality" machines may be a worthwhile pursuit but for many of us there is no other source and anyway they are often priced well above market value.
Without "cheap" Chinese product many of us would be locked out of the hobby.
Let us also not forget that the introduction of "out-sourcing", virtually a mantra by most management teams these days meant that "quality" manufacturers (in many countries) also contracted with the cheap Chinese manufacturers for procurement of cheaper product and to lower their own labour costs.
I would like to see a cheap source of raw materials locally as I'm finding it very difficult to hide their high cost from the financial controller.

 

[Superburban]

What American tool manufacturers will deal with hobby machinists ? Supplies are getting hard enough to find, Look at the discussion with Enco. American

Its not ethics, that prevent an American company from making a batch of crap quality machines, but rather labor cost, and liability insurance. A lot of small companies are prohibited from making end use products, because they would need a ton more insurance, which they cannot justify. Add in Taxes, and they cannot even come close to the price point of overseas products.

Now, Pieces parts. There is many American companies running circles around imports, in Quality, quantity, and even cost. Unfortunately, they are the ones who run a skeleton crew, and several CAD/CAM & CNC machines. A couple of programmers, A salesman, and a handful of low wage worker bees, and they can crank out tons of parts.

 

[BGHansen]

I have lots of Harbor Freight tools. Most of my go to sockets and combo wrenches are Craftsman from the mid-80's. The old saying "you get what you pay for" pretty much holds true for tools too. I've opened up a HF open end wrench putting a huge load on it with a pipe over the handle. Broken a few Craftsman sockets with breaker bars also. Seems like my old engineering profs were right about the stress vs. strain diagrams, load something hard enough, you've move out of the elastic region to the plastic region and it will yield.

I haven't bought too much import stuff through the mail, mostly have had my eyes on it before purchasing. An exception is QCTP holders. I have at least 15 of the turning/boring BXA style that are all imports. When I spend $11 for a CDCO vs. $60 for an Aloris, my expectation is to have to file/fine tune the CDCO to get it to work properly. I'm willing to do this on 5 of them for the same price of one Aloris.

Just my opinion, but I don't believe the Chinese purposely make bad products, they are dirty filthy capitalist communists (or whatever that government over there is called) and want our money. I just bought an AHP AlphaTig 200X welder, 2016 model. I think it's imported from China, otherwise there'd be big "made in USA" stickers all over it. They are a pretty popular entry level TIG welder and have evolved from the original 2013/14 model to 2015 then to 2016. Whoever makes them listened to their customer complaints and fixed/upgraded the machine. Not the type of response from someone only out for a quick buck.

We have the wonderful right of free speech in our country because of our wonderful armed forces servicemen who have paid the ultimate price many times. All so we can buy something cheaply made from overseas and then gripe about it not working right after the fact. If you have a bad experience with a tool or manufacturer, by all means post your experience as a heads up to others, then please move on . . .

I work for General Motors which produces and sells more cars in China than the USA. Can't tell you how many times I've read statements like "don't buy an American made piece of crap car, get a German or Japanese car". We work very hard to correct any problems in our cars to protect our customers, yet we are still fighting the "legacy" perception of producing junk. GM would love to open up more plants in the US and employ thousands of Americans ultimately boosting our country's economy (especially if we were exporting the cars). However, we're still fighting (for good reason from past sins) that "junk" perception. I'd give the Chinese the a fair shake. Of course, we're bankrupting the USA economy buy sending more dollars to China than we get back, but that's the subject for another ranting thread . . .

Bruce

 

[Downunder Bob]

I have lots of Harbor Freight tools. Most of my go to sockets and combo wrenches are Craftsman from the mid-80's. The old saying "you get what you pay for" pretty much holds true for tools too. I've opened up a HF open end wrench putting a huge load on it with a pipe over the handle. Broken a few Craftsman sockets with breaker bars also. Seems like my old engineering profs were right about the stress vs. strain diagrams, load something hard enough, you've move out of the elastic region to the plastic region and it will yield.

I haven't bought too much import stuff through the mail, mostly have had my eyes on it before purchasing. An exception is QCTP holders. I have at least 15 of the turning/boring BXA style that are all imports. When I spend $11 for a CDCO vs. $60 for an Aloris, my expectation is to have to file/fine tune the CDCO to get it to work properly. I'm willing to do this on 5 of them for the same price of one Aloris.

Just my opinion, but I don't believe the Chinese purposely make bad products, they are dirty filthy capitalist communists (or whatever that government over there is called) and want our money. I just bought an AHP AlphaTig 200X welder, 2016 model. I think it's imported from China, otherwise there'd be big "made in USA" stickers all over it. They are a pretty popular entry level TIG welder and have evolved from the original 2013/14 model to 2015 then to 2016. Whoever makes them listened to their customer complaints and fixed/upgraded the machine. Not the type of response from someone only out for a quick buck.

We have the wonderful right of free speech in our country because of our wonderful armed forces servicemen who have paid the ultimate price many times. All so we can buy something cheaply made from overseas and then gripe about it not working right after the fact. If you have a bad experience with a tool or manufacturer, by all means post your experience as a heads up to others, then please move on . . .

I work for General Motors which produces and sells more cars in China than the USA. Can't tell you how many times I've read statements like "don't buy an American made piece of crap car, get a German or Japanese car". We work very hard to correct any problems in our cars to protect our customers, yet we are still fighting the "legacy" perception of producing junk. GM would love to open up more plants in the US and employ thousands of Americans ultimately boosting our country's economy (especially if we were exporting the cars). However, we're still fighting (for good reason from past sins) that "junk" perception. I'd give the Chinese the a fair shake. Of course, we're bankrupting the USA economy buy sending more dollars to China than we get back, but that's the subject for another ranting thread . . .

Bruce

That pretty much sums it up. You usually get what you pay for, often even less, and very rarely more. Look at the specs, not the price.

 

[Bamban]

Here is a perspective from somebody who was an expat in China for 4 years.

I ran the Project Management Office on a project that was the largest foreign investment in all of China in 2000. This was a true internationally diverse manned endevour; construction by Bechtel, an American company, design by a Portland company, logistics by a Japanese company, hook up by a London company, construction and hook up management, and QAQC by American companies, and start up by our own engineers training over 250 engineers from the top universities in China. All workers were provided by Chinese companies. The project at over 1B with very aggressive timelines, fully integrated through Primavera from material acquisition through first silicon out, the execution must be right the first the first time, redos will kill the first silicon target date.

Sorry for the lengthy intro, but I have to start from that angle for y'all to have the appreciation when you throw in an international team directing work effort of over 500 Chinese at the peak.

Here is what I learned:

The Chinese workers want to do a good job, hampered only by their ignorance on some aspects that we take for granted. No one wants to produce bad output at the end of the day.

The engineers are comparable to the best graduates I dealt with in the US, Japan, and EU.

The quality of the work is what the supervising company demands and expect. Properly trained workers coupled with quality systems in place at every level, the quality of the work meets or exceeds our company requirements.

What motivates the Chinese workers is no different from what motivates their American counterparts. Their Chinese dream is no different from our American dream.

So, how did that project go? Our first silicon ran through the factory by Chinese workers and engineers bested our US factories' mature yield by double digit, and exceeded the foundry yield in Taiwan by a couple of percentage. And the yield just continued to improve from that point on.

There you go, they can hang with the best if given the means to perform.