Asian Import

Like I said before there are other places to express your feelings sailor1845. Sorry about your teeth and kneecaps but any manufactured item can be defective and good safety procedures should keep you out of harms way when something lets go.

Please stick with this forums rules and etiquette, we appreciate the way things are run here :encourage:
 
What is the point of this thread as in what did the OP expect the outcome would have been? thinking.gif :dunno:

This forum is not for *****ing (complaining) , moaning, or crying. It's about the community, shared interest, & shared knowledge.
 
I'd like to see comments on how everyone manages to get their offshore machines to work well, or other information about how to get good results. Not all offshore products are bad, and certainly not all domestic products are great.

-- I made a comment in a similar thread about this: In a lathe, condition is almost everything. Even low quality grey iron isstrong enough for most hobby turning... the condition and fit of the ways and gears can be checked by most anyone with a little experience. I'm a believer of 'good iron', not 'old iron', 'new iron' 'offshore or 'domestic' Fit and condition is everything.

- as I said before I am buying a 40 year old lathe because it is in every respects better than 'in new' condition. The owner took it apart, made important mods to it to make it better and has used it very lightly - just enough to break it in.
 
Dabbler said:
-- I made a comment in a similar thread about this: In a lathe, condition is almost everything. Even low quality grey iron isstrong enough for most hobby turning... the condition and fit of the ways and gears can be checked by most anyone with a little experience. I'm a believer of 'good iron', not 'old iron', 'new iron' 'offshore or 'domestic' Fit and condition is everything.

- as I said before I am buying a 40 year old lathe because it is in every respects better than 'in new' condition. The owner took it apart, made important mods to it to make it better and has used it very lightly - just enough to break it in.
Click to expand...

I agree, I bought a new US made mini-lathe and mill over the cheaper import mini-machines or used machines because everything I could find supported the idea that the Sherline machines could be used right out of the box, while most of the imports needed some tweaking and used machines were an unknown. Coming in with no experience and no experienced teachers to help me I needed to make sure I was starting off with only myself to blame for issues. That worked well for me, as they have been trouble free other than the operator.

When I became interested in getting something larger, I was mostly looking at new imports because again, I lacked the experience to ensure used machines were of decent quality. I ended up with old US made machines only because I was lucky enough to have some experienced people point me to some decent used machines that were available and suited my needs.
 
I have not had to tweak either my PM935 mill or my PM1340GT lathe, both Taiwan made. I did spend a year tweaking my Chinese CO 9x40 mill to get it where I wanted it. :)

I have helped two people try to make a used US made mill work. They were both worn out junk. Good price though. As someone else above mentioned, I too have bought a few 'US Made' tools recently and was not impressed with any of them. YMMV of course. :D
 
Last edited:
When I was lathe shopping to replace my tired American iron I made a "must have" features list and came up with a maximum price I would be willing to pay. Any price substantially over that and I would just have to live with the the shortcomings of the lathe I already had. I had yet to fullfill my features list and was at already double my max price? Then I discovered some of the expensive "American" machines weren't even made here but their big selling point was that they weren't made in China. I got a brand new GRIZZLY G4003G that had all my "must haves", a few "wanna haves" and even a couple of "didn't even know I had to haves". The machine was so much better than I was it was a bit embarrassing but I grew into it. Looking back it was the best move I could have made. When I see people seething with hate for Asian machines I just have to feel sorry for them carrying that around in their gut. This is a friendly hobby site and you have to ask yourself how many of us wouldn't even be here if it weren't for the opportunities presented by inexpensive imported machines.
 
my 40 year old lathe in the previous post was American made in 1979, but not commissioned until 1982. It had several horrible fit-and-finish issues: Half-nut dovetails were very rough and disengaging it was very hard, sand in the headstock oil (!!!), the tail stock need quite a bit of rework. These things are usually attributable to Chinese imports. Every piece of it was made in the USA.

Even if you buy a lathe like this, a little disassembly, cleaning, fitting (even at a beginner level) will work wonders with how easy it is to use. Even Taiwan isn't a 'magic formula' I, and several of my friends have Taiwanese lathes that needed fixes. Accuracy may be as simple as adjusting the gibs, or aligning the headstock. These are skills that are worthy to learn in any event. If you want a 'ready to run' buy from a dealer that does a complete check on the floor before delivering it to you. (You will pay about $1000 extra for this).
 
I consider adjusting the gibbs, aligning the headstock/tailstock, and tramming the head part of a machine's initial setup. While I expect the factory to do the initial settings, things are going to shift during shipment.

I doubt that any manufacturer of machines tells their customers that their product is 'good to go' right out of the crate. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top