Member postings for Alan Ambrose

Nice Just for grins, I've been calculating cost/Kg of various lathes & mills I'm getting numbers generally between 10 & 20 £/Kg.

Maybe cost / specific stiffness next (never mind the quality)?

Well, before we get too deep into, brand wars

Thanks everyone for your thoughts & knowledge. The info re which factories / what happens in China etc are interesting. The discussion helped my understanding and changed my mind about a few things. Given I have a little mill that has been CNCed, my leaning atm is to buy a smallish lathe to get to get to grips with and then convert to CNC and then buy a bigger lathe and miil as manual machines. Yeah probably Warco and/or Optimum.

Alan

Hi,

Trying to subscribe to MEW, I found at least three subscription links were broken on the main site. You might want to fix that. I found some ways through the impenetrable thicket in the end, but some would have given up...

Alan

>>> I'm not quite sure what different shade you're seeing

Well I might have just read it wrong...but...

On **LINK** 'Optimum Mashinen - Germany' the text reads, to me at least, as a German company that's running its own factory in China with the important stuff done by Germans , viz: 'The most important part of development, design and quality management takes place in Germany.' Interestingly though if you select a category, you're routed to www.stuermer-machines.com 'Stürmer Maschinen GmbH' - which actually lists a number of brands including Optimum. It goes on to say:

"In 1992, Kilian Stürmer, accompanied by a partner, also founded the OPTIMUM Maschinen Germany GmbH. Goal of these company foundations is to influence the product range, production and quality as well as the equipment of the machines directly. In Germany, OPTIMUM products are sold through a nationwide network of specialist retailers and in Europe through general importers who in turn supply the respective national retailers."

On the TopTech website, it says:

"Optimum (Yangzhou) Machinery Co., Ltd., a member of Yangzhou Euro Group, a German-China joint venture between Yangzhou Eurostar Machine Tool Factory and Optimum Maschinen Germany GmbH, was established in year 2003, located in Touqiao town, and covers an area of 34,000 square meters with 10,000 square meters of building space.

The company has more than 120 employees where 10 are technicians, 2 senior technical staff, and 3 German engineers ... All the products made by the company are jointly designed by Chinese and German engineers..."

That it, it says it's a joint venture, and there are actually only 3 German engineers on-site out of 120 employees.

Maybe they're just different PR slants on the same general vibe. Well, three cheers to them and I can't imagine UK machine-tool distributors having some actual employees on the ground in a Chinese joint venture - and JV suggests investment too. But apologies in advance if I'm underestimating some British companies. Maybe the devil is in the detail.

Alan

>>> There's a slightly fuller introduction to Optimum/Toptech here:

Well thanks for the link to TopTech / Yangzhou Euro Brother / Optimum (Yangzhou). That puts a slightly different shade on it. The 'German Engineers' branding thing sounds more like a little window dressing.

>>> machines are pretty much identical to the ones sold by many others

Yeah, that's what I thought, but another YouTube character, Blondihacks, suggested that a lot of the castings were common but often finished off by a bunch of different 'mom-and-pop' shops. So that, they may all look the same but not all be the same.

>>> I feel customer expectations are adrift when it comes to hobby machines ... Main thing I regret about buying a mini-lathe was the time wasted dithering about who best to get it from. Now I think learning how to use the machine was far more important than it's shortcomings.

Yes, well said.

Alan

For those people who have purchased Optimum products - did you source from a UK supplier or direct from Germany?

Alan

>>> This is a photo taken from an Optimum catalog that shows that, at least in 2015/2016 their factory was in Yangzhou.

From my link above, the marketing puff on their website states:

"Production in Yangzhou / China

Since 2003, OPTIMUM Maschinen Germany GmbH has produced a large share of its metalworking machines in its own factory in Yangzhou China. The quality here is monitored by German quality management officers and production supervisors. The most important part of development, design and quality management takes place in Germany."

Which is an appealing narrative at least...

Hi,

Anyone have any experience of the Optimum products?

**LINK**

These are appealing to me as: (a) Stefan Gotteswinter has one of their mills and I defer to him as a machinist and (b) they give guaranteed run-out specs and (c) their narrative says they run their own Chinese factory and do their own QC.

I saw some old threads here that suggested that Chester sold Optimum-sourced products, but I can't find any recent evidence to suggest that's true.

TIA, Alan