What price frustration?

I think the nail was hit squarely on the head with the comment that different Eastern brands vary. There's no doubt that many are good now or good enough for the average person's standards so I wouldn't tar every eastern manufacturer with the same brush. Warco may be one of the better ones. However, overall,  many suppliers of Eastern machines still have some catching up to do. The company I'm currently working for has an Axminster vertical milling machine and while it can perform most tasks asked of it, it definitely lacks the finesse and feel of a more expensive machine. The upshot is that everyone heads for the other milling machine first and the Axminster one only gets used when at busy times. That's not to have a pop at Axminster by saying there milling machine is no good, especially given the relative price, but more to illustrate there is a tangible difference. Yes, any half decent engineer worth his salt can compensate but the need to compensate itself makes the experience less pleasurable. Sometimes the small things like rattling fixtures or excessive and unajustable backlash in feed screws, or slides that tighten at one end regardless of the adjusting screws, all help destroy one's confidence in the accuracy of the machine. For those on a budget, I appreciate that cost is a big player so as someone else mentioned, doing some homework and choosing the right product is essential.

Posted by KWIL on 05/08/2010 12:17:02:
Who has been the longest in that particular business area?  WARCO and Chester, Chester has apparently a direct connection with their supplying factory.

 .

 

The question should be who has the best working relationship with the factory's?

 

One of the hardest things to find out in China is who ACTUALLY makes the product?  There are many trading companies who say they do but don't. If you go to any of the large shows in Canton or Shanghai you can spot the trading companies easily by what they are selling.

 

A manufacturer will only have his products on the stands and glossy leaflets which always show the factory, usually with rows of CNC's etc.

A trading company will have a variety of products because they are acting as agents for others, so they may have a few lathes, leaflets on mobile cranes and chemical products.

 

All the larger sellers, Warco, Chester, Arc, Axminster have direct connections with the relevant factories, it's only the ebay sellers who deal mail order with trading companies.

 

John S.

There are of course small industreal mills available for about half you would pay for a new western one ie UK USA EU area, they do make some really good gear,although if I could afford to I would buy British or similar. The best of the buyers here tend to buy of the factory floor, so they can see the item right from the beginning.Ian S C

Much further up this thread someone commented:

 

 If you look at MEs from about 1946 to 2000, you'll find an uncountable number of articles on how to improve the ML7 series of lathes. Even such folk as George Thomas had criticisms of them.

 

The reason the mags are now full of Chinese lathe 'improvement' articles is because they  are now more numerous, or at least more likely to be owned by model engineers interested in making their own accessories etc.

 

Neil

That may be true but were the articles about improvements in the design or about poor quality of manufacture? I suspect the former. The core of the discussion is about how the machines compare today. For example, the Chinese designs might be essentially sound (many of them unashamedly copied from western designs) but the execution in respect of manufacture is generally not as good, at least at the hobby end of the market, although they're getting better. If you build to a price then the first casualty is quality. Another example, compare the grittiness of ballraces of some far eastern accessories compared with a more expensive bearing. How many have changed out their headstock bearings for better ones? I'm not talking about upgrading, just replacing with the same spec but better branded. There is a difference. Co-centricity of collets. That's a regular gripe on these boards. How accurate are centres ground? Good enough for many and that's fine and as mentioned, very good for the price but Swiss or British/US quality they aren't.... generally.  Yes, there are some exception that are very good but unless you check the exact machine and every accessory you are purchasing before handing the money over, what is your level of trust that all will be well?

... and just to show I'm not set on auto eastern bashing, I should mention  I'm on the verge of buying a second lathe for the work arena which will probably be chinese, however, it'll be a careful selection process and I won't be expecting Schaublin quality while still leaving myself open to having my expectations pleasantly surpassed.

I bought a new Myford ML7 in 1969, brand new so the profits went to the factory as opposed to buying second hand.

 

I bought a brand new C7 Capstan Tri-lever in about 1985, again profits going to the factory, just to point out that I have supported them directly.

 

My ML7 and C7 had their beds ground on their slideway grinding machine, I have no idea what age it is but it is still the same machine they use today.

Last time I was over in China at the Canton show I made a point of asking on the various stands how old their slideway grinders were. It was an interesting exercise getting this across. The answers ranged from don't know to 1 year old, 6 months old and we are waiting a new CNC grinder from Switzerland.

 

The reason I asked this was that 3 years ago now I was getting some tooling reground and asked the guy at the tooling place if they were busy. He said they were but they could be busier if they could get the new machinery they needed. Turned out that that years total production and most of the coming years production was going to China.

 

His comment was they are making tooling we can't and not only that they are making it on machinery we have never even seen.

 

I don't want to bash British engineering but why should we pay thru the nose for a 60 year old design produced on outdated machinery, that's their problem, not ours.

The basic Myford lathe is a very simple design and cannot warrant a price tag of £7,000.

 

John S.

Posted by Sam Stones on 04/08/2010 08:58:45:

Instead, I offer the following :-

William Edwards Deming 1900-1993 (refer Wikipedia) had one statement which has stuck in my mind -

 

"Quality is Free".

I don't think that Deming or Crosby meant that quality is cheap. The phrase can be summarised (by me) as the total cost of a product can be the same and quality improved if various techniques are employed to reduce waste, re-work and warranty repairs.

  

When I had to work for a living one of my jobs was to select and buy new

machine tools.

The last project was quite significant by Australian standards.  The first phase was for three very specialised large capacity 5 axis CNC mills.  The company that I worked for was getting all excited by the size of this deal, until it was pointed out very politely by each of the three companies we were dealing with (one Japanese, one Swiss, one German) that they were a bit stretched at the time because of the twenty and thirty large capacity 5 axis CNC machines being installed in China, PER MONTH.

They may not be producing  equivalent quality machines yet, but they will, as sure as water flows downhill

cheers

Bill Pudney