"Made in U.S.A." ? Germany? UK? Korea?

[graham-xrf]

The number of people in the world who were even alive in Americas machine tool hey day has got to be fairly whittled down by now. Of that finite group, could we really depend on them remembering what a brand new SB 13 looked like as it was pulled from its shipping crate? Did everything work exactly as it should?

South Bend manufacturing era that my machine(s) date from were to a govenrment imposed specification for wartime need. There were no frills. The essential surfaces were precision, and the strength more than enough, but there was not too much concern for stuff like casting flashing and other customer appeal "look good" stuff. That I do not apply the same standards to machines I like, depending on origin, despite allowing for the different needs of the time, can only mean I have a sentimental bias. "The good ole' days", and this despite that my only acquaintance with "Made in USA" was stuff I would have bought as an import!

I remember an article I read about the beginnings of Clausing machine tools. The guy was building and selling his lathes, right? Hadn't yet made any sort of numbers yet, but he was working towards it. He'd left a note or a journal entry saying something to the effect that he was thinking he'd gotten this lathe he had built working pretty much, or pretty well or something like that. Not perfect. Not "perfect in every imaginable way".... just pretty well. Now we don't know if he was being humble. But it indicates a different story of American Manufacturing than this idyllic notion that everything old American was a profoundly high quality machine.

At some stage in the 1960's, Clausing and Colchester came together, perhaps because they had the similar work ethic and belief in the product. There is a picture of Paul Clausing from 1928, using his South Bend. It seems he thought he could make a better lathe than South Bend [1].
Should I find an affordable, nice condition Clausing - or Colchester, I would be strongly tempted to "trade up"

I'm often amazed by the ingenuity of that time. The things they did with pencil and paper, their ability to judge steel temps by eye, the grit and craftsmanship of bonafide pattern makers. But almost all of that has been replaced by a computer.

Agreed! I don't know how true it is portrayed in the movie about the Manhattan Project, But apparently Enrico Fermi used a slide rule in real time to calculate the progress of the reaction. Certainly there was a time when "computers" meant poorly paid women staff churning mechanical calculators, or punching cards, getting answers that made Apollo 11 happen. Now we face AI super-computing using GPUs.

Mass manufacturing will never make 100% perfect stuff. But they all try to. The scale is just too great for that. Your screwdrivers would cost ten times what they do to make that happen. And it wouldn't matter where they were made, or where the steel came from. And as I mentioned before, it already doesn't matter where the steel came from.

When the scale is a bit smaller, they get damn close! We don't need to mechanically tell the time anymore, but the latest technology carving pure silicon, quartz, or sapphire into parts for high end wristwatches, looks like they were taken from the universe atom by atom! Definitely not mass-manufacture, some of the best of these tiny machines are here..
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[1] http://www.lathes.co.uk/clausing/page11.html

 

[Deleted member 69715]

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If any Harley aficionados in the know are about to tell me how much of this machine is actually made in Asia, then please let me down gently!

I won't tell...actually not sure. I don't care for new vehicles. But you can compare it somewhat to a mis-fifties' example. Disclaimer: A lot of liberty taken with this, and aftermarket parts are definitely used,

 

[graham-xrf]

Quality control is the key to quality products. A final inspection will not catch hidden defects. This has to be done via in-process inspection. For 23 years, I made and sold equestrian timers. I had 29 in-process quality inspections during the manufacturing process. In 23 years, I never had a product returned due to defect.

Quality control is an expensive component in manufacturing with only subtle benefits. As a manufacturing engineering manager in a medical device company, I was also responsible for managing the quality control group. This is unusual as managing manufacturing engineering and qyality control is considered a conflict of interest.

At one point, the company decided to hire a trained quality assurance engineer to manage the quality control group. Hr gave a lecture to the company where he was talking about the cost of quality control. He insisted that the proper amount of quality was the point at which customers began to complain. My position was that we should never knowingly allow an inferior product to go out the door. I left the company a year later.

He was absolutely wrong! The point at which a company becomes aware customers are complaining is already well beyond the point the reputation is risking ruin. Many customers do not want to to throw good money after bad, nor waste effort in debating the quality with the supplier. The most they want is a refund, and will never touch the brand again. Many will not even complain, they just never go there again.

 

[RJSakowski]

He was absolutely wrong! The point at which a company becomes aware customers are complaining is already well beyond the point the reputation is risking ruin. Many customers do not want to to throw good money after bad, nor waste effort in debating the quality with the supplier. The most they want is a refund, and will never touch the brand again. Many will not even complain, they just never go there again.

Points that I made at the time but they fell on deaf ears. We were an ISO9001 certified company at that point and one of the principles of ISO9000 is continuous quality improvement of which monitoring customer feedback and applying corrective and preventative actions to eliminate the issues is a component.

Prior the the QA manager's arrival, I had managed the internal audits for the company and had the authority to write up non-compliance's which had to be properly addressed by involved parties and were subject to review by external auditors in their biannual recertification audit. Failure to properly address non-compliance's could result in loss of certification and the ability to sell products in the EU so there were some teeth in the action.

 

[RJSakowski]

Manufacturers and retailers typically address the requirement for ISO900o continuous quality improvement by asking customers to fill out customer satisfaction surveys which do little to address real problems. However, if you have an issue with a product and file an official complaint, they are obligated to log that complaint and to follow through with the corrective/preventative action process. Not saying that they actually will log the complaint but it's a start. Taking it one step further, identifying who the notified body that conducts their recertification audit is and filing a complaint with them may be a path forward. The notified body identity can be found on the vendor's ISO9000 certificate, usually available on the vendor's website. For example here is the one for Black and Decker. https://www.certipedia.com/quality_marks/9105072488?qm_locale=en&locale=en

 

[Aaron_W]

I will point out that a rather critical factor often ignored in the "made in" threads is price point. Many products are made in China, India, Vietnam etc specifically to do it as cheaply as possible, but these countries are not entirely limited to making cheap junk.

Looking at Grizzly since they cover a broad spectrum from fairly cheap to not very cheap.

A Grizzly G0709 14x40" (made in China) lathe costs $7500
they also sell a South Bend (Grizzly owned brand) SB1039F 14x40" (made in China) lathe for $25,500. This does include a DRO (Fagor, MSC sells this brand of 2 axis DRO for $1500), so lets call it $24,000.

Precision Matthews sells several Chinese 14x40 lathes in the same $7000-8000 range, as well as the Taiwan made PM1440GT for $11,000.

I think it is safe to assume that Chinese South Bend is probably much nicer than the $7000-8000 Chinese lathes, and still nicer than the Taiwan built 1440GT. I bet it even looks pretty good compared to a 70 year old USA South Bend. If somebody is spending $25,000 on a 14" lathe they probably expect it to work and are not going to tolerate futzing around cleaning mystery oil and grit, doing a final finish on parts or immediately replacing cheap parts with better quality ones as they will with an $800 7x12.

As hobbyists, and particularly fans of "old iron", it is rarely considered that the preferred old iron are often industrial grade machines well beyond most hobbyists budgets. Comparing them to new hobby / light industrial grade machines is valid as you can get a lot of machine for your money buying old iron, but to compare build quality is not really fair because you are comparing two completely different classes of machine.

I have a 1932 Rivett 608 8.5x21" lathe I am putting into use, in 1941 these lathes cost $1250 without the bench or motor which cost extra. These lathes were entirely hand scraped and hand fitted. In 2022 dollars $1250 is $24,500.

Little Machine Shop sells their Model 7500 8.5x20 lathe for $2800.

All in I will have spent far less than $2800 on the Rivett, so it is a fair example of what you can get buying old iron vs buying new.


Using it as a comparison of build quality between old USA made and Chinese though is ridiculous. The LMS lathe is made to be a small lathe for a hobbyist with a decent budget but lacking the space or need for a larger lathe.
The Rivett is a piece of mechanical artwork made for work far well beyond my ability. They were not only beyond the budget of most hobbyists, they were beyond the budgets of all but the deepest pockets, with less than 2000 made over 40 years of production.

A South Bend Model 9B (change gears, power cross feed) is a far more fair comparison, a 3-1/2 foot model (22" between centers) cost $277 in 1947, or $3600 in 2022. Now with this comparison you can probably have a good debate with on which is better. With the SB you can probably get it for less than half the price of the new 7500, the 7500 has a bigger spindle bore and variable speed. Build quality will probably favor a post war SB, but LMS has a good reputation for QC and 50-70 years of age / use will take a toll.

 

[MikeInOr]

My father worked for Proto tools back in the 70's when they were owned by Ingersoll Rand. Not too long after he became the GM of the Milwaukee OR plant Proto was bought out by Stanley. Under Stanley everything was slowly moved to Asia (Taiwan and China). He became the Manager of product engineering for Stanley in which a good portion of his job was to build new factories in Taiwan and engineer the production lines to ensure decent quality control. About when he retired they started closing the Stanley plants in Taiwan and China and sent their production out to bid. This is when the quality really took a hit. Most all of his engineers that knew a good tool from a bad tool, good steel from bad steel, good heat treating from bad heat treating etc. also left Stanley at that time.

I don't believe "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in China" is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to quality. It is the "Made by Lowest Bidder" where quality really goes out the window. During and shortly after the "Made by Lowest Bidder" transition took place Stanley hand tools still had a good reputation and MUCH lower production costs so the stock prices shot up, through the roof. It was also during this time period that board of directors tried to move the Stanley headquarters from Connecticut to Bermuda to dodge US taxes and further pad the stock prices. At the height of the stock prices the CEO of Stanley, John M. Trani, took all of his stock options, sold out and retired with many tens of millions of $$$. My father also did VERY well on his Stanley stock but he always despised Trani for selling out and ruining the quality that the company used to stand for.

 

[jwmay]

Off topic: But regarding Stanley specifically, I was recently employed by a company using Stanley Rivet guns. The rep who gave us our training told a story of how Stanley was a competitor of whomever he works for now. His employer had bought them at some point, and basically took whatever features they deemed important from the Stanley gun and put it in their new gun. I have no first hand knowledge btw. But even the rep said that his biggest trouble training people is with people who used the Stanley guns. Evidently those guns didn't care what sort of lubricant you used. While the new guns were very particular about what lubricant was used, and could be rendered useless with improper lubricant. It was super interesting to me. He said some people didn't even want the new guns. But I never knew Stanley was even making anything industrial grade. So that really piqued my interest.
That " made by lowest bidder " stuff has always haunted me. Every time I'm shopping for something, I'm having that same thought. Is this version the "cheapest built" or the "mid grade"? We really don't know! Ever! That's private between the business selling the tool and the business making the tool. Aargh!
I have had real good luck with Grizzly so far. So if there's something new and expensive I'm gonna buy, I buy it from them.