Kinda going off Chinese import stuff..

[graham-xrf]

The kit, that is, not the grass-roots people.

Stefan Gotteswinter has pointed out that for many folk with a hobby machine interest, if it were not for the import, it would be no machine at all! Perhaps let us exclude the Taiwan manufactured kit from this category, because the very popular Precision Matthews stuff is not only good value for money, the construction is very clearly better than in most Chinese imports. Even so, I look around at stuff I have. The pervasive majority seems Chinese, even down to the impact driver, the new thermostatic soldering iron rework station for electronic work, and I cannot help feel I don't want it this way!

The two machines that elicit the best feelings in me are the South Bends. They are American, and old, but are being given the TLC to become proud. In context, I am not even American!

So I compare to the several brand new machines in my shop, some still on the shipping pallets. The drill press, new out of the box, vibrates to the point of needing ear defenders. It is supposedly an Austrian premium brand, but one look at the attempted translation several languages "manual", roughly 4cm x 3cm, in a font so small as to require a headband magnifier, made me suspect otherwise.

My Cormak mill, imported from Poland, is a PM-25MV variant, seemingly identical to Grizzly G0704, Weiss-VM25, and all the others with the same Chinese DNA. I have to agree with Stefan, that one should treat the Chinese imports as a base parts kit, to be worked on, upgraded, refined, and given the features a really nice machine should have.

So what happened? We can't really stay with the story that these are made by poorly paid urchins in China! The "Drillpro" end mills available from Banggood are very nice, reasonably priced, and did not come from a Shenzhen sweatshop!

 

[woodchucker]

well said. We have done it to ourselves.
Politically we did this to ourselves as well. Nixon went over and opened the door to pandora's box.
The American companies greedy for more business (opening up the china economy) started to build the factories.. Then China woke up and realized they didn't need us anymore. The rest is as they say history.

edit: but let me poke in this was CEOs and politicians that did this.. We were just hooked by cheap products..

 

[vtcnc]

I think when the real historians in the world finally get the non-politicalized story of globalisation straightened out, it will tell the story of how nearly a billion people in two developing countries came out of subsistence farming and urban poverty and became part of the working middle class and will describe all of the problems and wonders that come along with that transformation.

China went from stealing, copying, and arguably still struggling to make a quality product to eventually having their own global powerhouse industries. This is still playing out and it is fraught with compromises, unfulfilled standards, broken promises, etc., i.e. China and India's industries are still getting sorted out and I think time will tell if they can meet global needs and standards.

And the history books will tell a story about how many companies in the original industrialist countries played games with quality to stay alive. Cutting corners, figuring out ways to cheat on costs, exploiting others to make marginal gains while losing focus on their craft. What we are witnessing is miraculous and ugly at the same time.

On the other hand, it is hard to grasp how many great manufacturers are out there. They are just so many trying to make good products, its just that many of them aren't making smaller machining equipment. I'm optimistic we will get it sorted out someday.

 

[mmcmdl]

I've never seen Chinese machines in any shop I've worked in/with , for good reason . I'll take good condition American Iron over these kits any day of the week . JMO and your mileage may vary .

 

[Bi11Hudson]

Although with nothing useful to say, I've just got to jump into this one. While I have an Atlas/Craftsman 12X36 that is about American as I am, we both date around the same time and our ancestry is similar. Although my roots go back a bit further (~1620ish). On the other hand, I also have a Chinese 9X19, actually Taiwanese. (Grizzly G1550) Having worked and traveled in the western Pacific for several years, I must differentiate Taiwan and mainland China. Of course my time there predates the release of Hong Kong, around 40 years back. But even today, a Taiwan machine is superior by far to a Chinese machine in a generally comparable price range. A good example of that difference being Harbor Freight versus Grizzly.

What I saw in the Pacific Rim was a distinct difference of construction of buildings, mostly earthquake and typhoon resistant concrete. While there were many (south) Korean crews on the jobs, I suspect North Korean or Chinese oversight. As well as many Korean and Chinese businesses. Much of my time was on Guam, where there were some socially acceptable businesses and some not so acceptable. I suppose your personal attitudes about strip clubs determine that. Every club I worked in or visited was Chinese. In almost every case, the Chinese were not about to accept American standards of workmanship. If it would stand for now and was cheap, it was satisfactory to them. They simply would not pay for American workmanship.

I could go on for hours, particularly in the Micronesian arena. But much of the work was locals that had learned from outsiders. If they learned from Americans (usually Navy Seabees) the work was pretty good. If they had learned from Chinese or Koreans, it was not so good. My work for the US Navy and US Air Force was all on bases on Guam as an electrician. I saw no Asians beyond a few Phillipinos at the Public Works shops. When I went to work on computers for Pacific Data Systems, I came in contact with more Asians than US nationals. Particularly the service people for Wang Computers. Wang of course was a US company (Boston, Mass), but Mr An Wang, the inventor, was Chinese. The people of Guam are born US citizens since 1898. Once they are known, it is possible to differentiate them from other Micronesian peoples. All in all, an interesting few years.

.

 

[graham-xrf]

The point made by @Bi11Hudson is apt. Some cultures seemingly never aspire to the kind of surroundings and ways that are the norms in USA / European / Pacific. I use Google street-view, and look at the obscure places. In Africa, there are fine buildings that date back to early last century, still in use, but still showing wear and tear, and the bullet holes. Streets that are never swept. Nobody paints the place. You can find those videos of exemplary and skilled engineering being carried out in filthy alcoves in Karachi back streets. The reality of much of what I knew in Africa seems to have "gone backwards". There are exceptions. A place like Swakopmund (Namibia) is fabulous, though entirely based on tourism. Really horrid are the back streets of Santiago. Incredibly clean and crime-free is Haifa. Contrast Longyearbyen (Svalbard, Norway) with almost any working street in Pakistan.

Straightfoward machine items
I have some ground reference test bars for lathe alignment, listed as "proudly made in India". A precision test bar is hardly rocket science! I would have expected something like that could be had from Sheffield (UK), or Buffalo (NY) without looking way overpriced! Here, engineering companies only want to be into big, very high tech, with prices into six and seven digits. Build satellites, or have a screwdriver assembly factory putting together cars for export - from imported parts! It seems the Chinese, Indians, Taiwanese, Koreans and others may be providing the bits from the nuts, bolts, and screws on up.

However convenient, and low cost, I just can't feel the same about Chinese machine stuff as even an old used South Bend. Nor is it something sentimental (I don't think). It can't reasonably be "western cultural identity nationalism" either. Even though in UK now, was born in Africa.

 

[addertooth]

This has always been an interesting and very complex topic. To really understand it, the scope of time has to begin back in Europe, before America had any significant manufacturing capability.

When the USA started to manufacture products, the Europeans were very proud of their "old world craftsmanship", and viewed almost everything made in the USA as markedly inferior. American Companies preferred European crafted tooling for their factories, but made the choice to buy American-made equipment due to the difference in price. Much of the American equipment was "derived" (copied) from European designs. In this time period, American equipment was analogous to how the less expensive Chinese equipment is viewed today.

Then, World War II happened. There was a greater need for precision produced products. There was a greater focus on precision, not just from the tools, but also the workers (in large numbers) were indoctrinated with the concept of Precision and Repeatability of the product. Keep in mind, that many of those workers had ridden in horse and buggies as a child, and not all had electrical power in their homes yet. The cities were technological wonders, but as you moved away from the cities, a less-technical public lived.

Post World War II, much of Europe's manufacturing might had been bombed and destroyed. American manufacturing was intact, and raced in to fill the void which existed in world-wide production. It was boom days for the American manufacturing industries. Average wages climbed and the American dream of owning homes thrived (we shifted away from 2 and 3 generations living in a single home, like the Walton's show on TV).

The first steps towards Asian production began in Post-War Japan. Under post-war reconstruction of Japan, the USA government spent a lot of money, and sent experts to help get their production methods and processes modernized. This resulted in an explosion in products which proudly showed the "made in Japan" label. Less than 15 years later, Japan was recognized as a production powerhouse (but many Americans held onto the belief that Japanese products were inferior. (We were the ones who were using the "craftsmanship argument, which Europe had held against our products a century before).

There was an equivalent (and later) set of similar actions which happened in Taiwan. The results were similar.

Large American and European countries set their eyes on China as a great source of inexpensive labor. Much like the early American production, the workforce had not yet been indoctrinated in the culture of accuracy and repeatability. They had many of the same struggles. Like early American companies, they copied existing successful designs to produce products.

The "dark side" is also a worthy story. American companies, such as Briggs and Stratton pushed production to China. They imagined the profits from reducing production costs. They did initially realize greater profits. But in true China-fashion, soon other engine-making businesses sprung up (under other names and ownership) producing an engine which looked/acted/ran like the classical Briggs and Stratton design. It turned out that Briggs and Stratton started facing stiff competition from cheaper sources (which used the design which they had taught the Chinese how to make). Many in the industry are expecting Briggs and Stratton to face eventual closure. This example is emblematic across multiple industries which moved manufacturing to China, set up the tooling, and trained the workforce in the production of their main product. Once you teach another nation how to "make stuff", you will eventually face them as a competitor.

This is where we are today. China still struggles with much of it's population straddling pre-industrial for it's older members, and fully industrial for the younger citizens. Industrialization is rapidly becoming a core part of their society, with the associated increase in the values of accuracy and repeatability. I fully expect to see some "Taiwan quality" level of products emerging from China in about a Decade (if historical patterns hold true). It always starts with a push to familiarize the working public with key values and principles which lead to this outcome.

A later post post-script after review: (To do a truly deep dive, we would have to go back to Greek times, when they considered Romans primitive, and later, the Romans who made fun of the stick and grass huts the Europeans were living in, but that is too much history to cover). Neither were doing (significant) production work, but they understood making goods of "enduring value", and precision. You could argue the manufacture of Amphora to transport wine and olive oil were mass production products. You could also argue their production of very similar war-ships and weapons were a production effort. They set up specialized tooling (and standards) to achieve these repeatable results.

"All good industrialized societies START, with educating the working public to the concepts of A Standard, Precision, and Repeatability".
You have to teach the workforce, that variations in results are "unacceptable", and not simply a "personality" for the product.

 

[Winegrower]

Really all this could have been and was predicted long ago. As long as labor rates are significantly different for similar skills around the world, work will migrate to the lower cost producers. For example, we see India as a new low cost supplier of our hobby type equipment, but they are also solidly into software development.

The difficult and troublesome fact is that if you don't manufacture or produce the current generation, you can't design the next generation. A huge amount of US based design is really "specification" of what you want built next time.

Since there is no geographic, national or racial boundaries for creativity, this will continue until wages and productivity tend to equalize around the world.

So says me.

 

[sdelivery]

A BIG part of the problem was when the end user i.e. the consumer decided they would get the two dollar Chinese pliers instead of the 20.00 made in USA...I heard it all around me for years....
"I only need it for this , so if it works one time for me" and "I don't care, I can buy ten for this price"
Many didn't realize that, slowly they were giving away jobs.
In some industries there can be enough support businesses (companies that provide things to keep the manufacturers manufacturing) and employees that a 500 job loss at the manufacturer can be another 50 to 500 at support businesses.
A World economy puts your American high paying jobs directly in competition with under developed back alley workers jobs. 20.00 per hour or 20.00 per day.
Which looks appealing to a business for profit?
Then you have the legal angle. Now that so much is dropped off unboxed in container load quanity and boxed here under a variety of labels, the ability to seek retribution from the manufacturer is about gone.
We hit a point in this country where you couldn't do anything with out the possibility of being sued.
Look at all the labels and little printed papers that come with these products...in short it says they can only be liable for the value of the product. So if that Chinese disc brake rotor fails and you get into a catastrophic accident they can only be sued for the 19.95 rotor you bought. The American manufacturers were being hammered with bs law suits, it became settle out of court it will be cheaper.
Now we need more insurance....who do you think is going to pay for that....the end user WHO ELSE?

 

[woodchucker]

Really all this could have been and was predicted long ago. As long as labor rates are significantly different for similar skills around the world, work will migrate to the lower cost producers. For example, we see India as a new low cost supplier of our hobby type equipment, but they are also solidly into software development.

The difficult and troublesome fact is that if you don't manufacture or produce the current generation, you can't design the next generation. A huge amount of US based design is really "specification" of what you want built next time.

Since there is no geographic, national or racial boundaries for creativity, this will continue until wages and productivity tend to equalize around the world.

So says me.

they won't equalize... we are in decline. Many today are half the intelligence of our parents generation.
Just watched a little street walking .. like Jay Leno's Jay walking... most people could not answer basic questions... it was sad. They could answer movie, tv, but not intelligence questions... It's sad, but many could not point out the USA on a map... WTF..

we are becoming a third world country. My second or third grade teacher predicted this. she said it was a cycle.. we would have high wages and be pushed out of buying our own products, other countries would come in and undercut us... eventually we will be a third world country and the cycle will repeat..... we will be low wage and start making again... but that can take generations to happen.

When you look at the roman empire and the dark ages... you really can see how decline looks... it's not pretty. based on some politics now.. it's clear, we have 2 extremes trying to dumb us down.