Excellent Chinese Chuck

Thank you John, Dave and Bob for your informative replies, I am still astounded that decent chucks can be supplied at those prices. Chris Crew who started this post bought his chuck for £108 of which £18 was for delivery.

Bear in mind this was for a four jaw self centreing chuck of 8 inch diameter and like him I asked myself how could it be made and distributed at that sort of cost. Just buying an 8 inch lump of cast iron of a size sufficient to make it would set me back about the same without even making a hole in it .

I am all chucked out for the time being but I will remember this information when I come to buy a new chuck

Interesting times indeed as Dave observed

Brian

If you read Joseph Nochi’s (who’s views I respect) experience on this forum about Sanou Chuck which he purchased via a marketplace platform a few years ago, they were less than complementary.

So, in early 2019 a decision was made to visit the factory to see for our selves. My wife and I on behalf of ARC, along with representatives of two other organisations who purchase lathe chucks for various customers around the world, went for days meeting.

SANOU is a well organised family run business with two brothers at the head. They are an extremely alert pair. Both have their figure on the pulse in terms of engineering, finance, marketing and most importantly politics (subject in which they take strong national pride).

As a result, they will produce whatever the customer wants, at whatever price level, provided large MOQs are provided. They do not keep any stock, working on a 'just in time' system. The level of advanced automation is one of the best I have seen. Their major production mostly for larger size chucks is made of consumption within China. Overruns or rejects sold off to whoever wants them.

The quality is very much dependant on what the customer wants to pay for the price. So, you will see different grades of the same product in different market places around the world, all with the SANOU mark.

ARC purchases the quality it is happy with, at the price it pays to its manufacturing supplier. At present, the supplier for its Chinese origin lathe chucks is SANOU. We pay a premium for our branded product for a specific specification, along with the two other organisations as mentioned above.

- Technically, the K**-###* mentioned by Jason above, refers to a standard Chinese numbering system. This is what is supposed to be used by ALL Chinese lathe chuck manufacturers for a given size/type, originally established in the old Russian collaboration days.
- Around four to five factories were established by the communist state in four corners of China, led by Huhhot and Yantai - the original set-ups, followed by their engineers being sent to the other corners on the country to establish lathe chuck factories following the same systems.

Now a days, although the numbering system remains, several lathe chuck founding factories have collapsed, either financially or politically, leading to new set-ups rising from the ashes. One always has to keep an eye on these lathe chuck factories, as it is difficult to be sure about when changes will take place.

Keeping all of the above issues in mind, ARC made a decision to sell Chinese origin lathe chucks in its own brand. We don't know if and when we have to change the manufacturing supplier, but at present we are happy and grateful with SANOUs ability to supply us what we need. We will not supply lathe chucks under the SANOU brand as far as possible (unless we have no choice), because we are aware of the different grades available, especially for the smaller sized chucks, all of which carry the SANOU brand.

Ady1: Keyless drill chucks are a very good example of after market product which ARC buys from a different source other than SANOU. The quality for this product from SANOU fails to meet our needs. There are sub-contract factories to SANOU for this product range, branded SANOU, but outside of their QC, because the price paid to them for this product is seriously low for them to consider production in-house. Having said this, many machine manufacturers will use such drill chucks as well as key type chucks procured through SANOU directly or through wholesalers. Price paid by ARC for keyless chucks from another location in China is far higher than the offering from SANOU. Similarly, back in 2019, I am aware that ROHM procured its components for such products from elsewhere.

Bob Stevenson: Fuerda is a different factory from SANOU, based in a different location.

SOD Dave: After visiting the state of the art SANOU factory, I would suggest it is difficult to make decent chucks. I have visited several lathe chuck factories in China as well as in India. Yes, I would agree that there is a high level of politics, especially associated with this factory, and for this reason it always helps to be friendly with more than one maker, for reasons stated above . As far as the Chinese and Indians are concerned, they are both extremely focused on their own national pride, with a healthy measure of sabrer-rattling at each other. Whilst is is very true that the current generation on Chinese and Indians are extremely confident of their own abilities - rightly as well as wrongly, probability of India entering into a 'REAL' healthy relationship with China at present are low.

Even though SANOU sends a high volume of variable grade chucks to India, the demand for locally produced chucks within India is far higher, mainly due to national pride, and SANOU has a very small market share.

Ketan at ARC

I dont think you need to worry too much about RCEP, which nobody in Australia has even heard of yet. It is a free trade agreement, yet to be ratified, not a full-on economic organisation and bloc like the EU. And China will do what it wants regardless of any treaty, as it has fully demonstrated.

Probably unreported in the UK, but China has been waging a one-way trade war against Australia since our government's call six to 12 months ago for a full and open investigation into the Wuhan Covid 19 outbreak. China has used various excuse to stop importing Australian coal, iron ore, food, grain, meat, fish, wine etc. The matter is on the verge of going to the WTO for arbitration as it defies various existing agreements etc.

So far, no slow down on Chinese consumer goods, tat or quality, coming into the country and no price rises. And Australian industries are finding new markets for their exports in places like India and UK. So life goes on.

Main result has been an increased questioning of the ethics of doing business at all with countries with appalling human rights abuses ongoing.

We live in interesting times indeed.

Ketan: Thanks for the inside view of the industry. Always interesting to hear what goes on behind the scenes.

As Ketan alludes to - chinese quality of goods is related to the customer’s requirements. If substandard goods are rejected by the importer, the manufacturer will soon learn to supply goods to the spec required - they don’t give anything better than the specification, as that costs them profit.

My nice looking Feurda supplied with a new Warco lathe was most disappointing as it's average run out at all diameters was .25 mm although the obligatory ficticious inspection report alluded to a run out of .03 mm! My solution was to reduce the back plate register diameter, re-cut the screw counter bores because as usual a normal not flat bottomed drill had been used & then trued up the chuck with judicious tapping using a nylon faced mallet.

Tony

During the quest to get the best accuracy I could from my Chester DB 10 and achieve a parallel cut to over 120mm cut I could never get consistent results and even after marking if I removed the work and put it back into the chuck it wasn't anything like concentric, sometimes the run out was visible. I tried everything but had to concede that the chuck just wasn't very good. I ordered a fairly cheap 125mm dia 3 jaw chuck from ARC, it arrived quickly, I cleaned it, although it probably didn't need it. Put it onto the back plate and wow, what a difference. I can't be 100% sure, but I think I paid less that £50 including postage. So then I was able to shim the head and I now get 0.01mm run out over 120mm length of cut, I am certainly happy with the chuck that I bought from ARC.

Edited By Ian Skeldon 2 on 29/03/2021 10:05:04

Thank you Ketan for that detailed overview. You will be ideally placed to make properly evaluated comparisons and you have reinforced my own views on Chinese supply. They can and will supply to whatever the customer asks for but to not one penny more as the saying goes.

If their customer can absorb rubbish, then that is what will be supplied.

I have a German friend, now retired who worked for a well known European earth moving and excavator company which sourced many of their manufactured parts from China. The quality spec. was met to the letter when the work was supervised by his company resident engineers, but if that was broken by absence for any reason, standards slipped to the point where automatic scrapping was called for by his company of everything made in the interval.

It does seem to be a very alien concept to me to be able to deliberately produce sub-standard work like that.

Regards Brian

Everyone does it, and although they didn't call it that Planned Obsolescence started in the 19th Century. Although customers like stuff to last forever, it makes less sense to manufacturers. As it's impossible for them to stay in business if they saturate their market, they either have to come up with must-have improvements, or to make stuff that wears out and has to be replaced.

Myford are an example. Selling lathes lasting 60 years plus for sale mainly to ultra-penny-shy model engineers meant ever shrinking sales of their relatively costly machines. Too many Myford fans bought second-hand rather than keeping the firm alive by coughing up for a new one. Myford fatally competed with themselves, and might still be with us had their machines been engineered to only last 30 years despite the best efforts of owners who enjoy repairing things...

Dave

It's such a well known phenomenon to foreigners doing business in China is has been given its own name: Quality Fade.

The product starts off great, all to the overseas buyers specs. Then over time, Chinese manufacturers gradually reduce material qualities and quantities to enhance their profit margins. Sometimes with disastrous results both quality and safety-wise.

Part of this is because of the uncertain political nature of industry in China that Ketan alludes to. Factory owners cant be sure they will be allowed to continue in business next year, so they focus on quick profits this month.

Whole books have been written on Quality Fade, it is so well recognised. Lot more about it here **LINK**