Chinese lathes

Hi There

The forum is not for expletives.

In case you have forgotten the new web editor is a lady and we also want to attract youngsters into the hobby.

regards david

 

Hi All,

I swear a lot (in my workshop) about being such a greedy idiot to buy such cheap rubbish. Many years ago I bought various items at exhibitions, e. g.,  boxeed set of BA taps & dies which contained  something like no 7 BA taps but doubled - up 2BA, to fill the `holes` up. The vendor gets a box out from under the stand, opens it to show its full and then youre stuck with it, when at home you find the fraud. I also bought from another regular well known stall holder, a surface gauge which appeared to be OK til I put the scriber against a rule and the scriber and all its supporting adjustment mechanism promptly moved backwards!  However tightly it is fixed, the whole mechanism still moves. I have never worked out how to correct this and club members didnt know either. I have some nice Dormer drills with a shiny band on the shank where the size is very clearly stamped. I also have many drills, all black, very badly stamped, so bad I have to resort to a strong illumination at an angle + strong magnification to read a lot of them especially the smaller drills. This malaise seemed to start a few years ago when buying Metric drills but more recently to the old Imperial sizes. These drills again came from prominent ME suppliers. No doubt they are keeping their purchasing prices down by sourcing from the far east then selling to `us` at a high price and trousering the diff. Last week on a diff. thread I described the dodgy bandsaw that had to have a mod to stop the blade from keep jumping off the wheels. I could go on and at the same time praise my Myford lathe, Fobco Drill and the mill, all have given complete satisfaction albeit at a price. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about lathe tools from the exhibition with hard tips apparently `brazed` on - with chewing gum?  `Cos they fell of as soon as they were shown to the work.

 

What I would like to know.

 

What was Warco's reaction when you showed them the problems?

 

Or did you just post them up here without informing them first?

 

If you did post without first contacting Warco, then there is no sympathy at all coming from this direction.

 

I have always found that if there is a problem, most (not all) retailers will bend over backwards to make sure you are happy with your purchase. For the ones that won't, trading standards can usually be brought in to solve your problems, and then don't ever use them again, and also warn other people off from using them. It is up to them to build their reputations back up again.

 

The lathe shown is very similar to my own, except for the build up of the head, I have a few more bits 'n bobs inside mine, but I suffered none of the problems that were shown, and I went over mine with a fine tooth comb when doing all my vital and necessary initial setups.

In fact, the lathe I have, is the second one. I refused to accept the first because there were certain points to the lathe that I didn't like, leadscrew cover preventing full travel of the saddle and the chuck guard wasn't to my liking, plus a few other little niggles. The replacement was swapped over by the supplier (it took them most of a day to get the old one out of my shop and the new one installed), and all points that I had raised were cured to my satisfaction, and at a large cost to the supplier for not only the time spent on it, but by fitting third party bits to replace the ones that I wasn't happy with.

In fact, I was invited to the factory workshop first, to check that everything was to my satisfaction before the swapover.

 

Warco, like most others, are box shifters, and can't be expected to unpack every machine and give it a thorough going over. Doing that would most probably double the cost of whatever you have bought.

It is up to people like ourselves to tell them where the troubles lie, so that the manufacturers can get their ar**s kicked, and told not to do it again.

 

I know for a fact that some of the mods I have shown on sites belonging to suppliers have directly resulted in certain mods being done to machines at the factory.

 

So it does work, they do listen to the little man in the street, sometimes.

 

But one thing that MUST NOT be done, is to crucify a supplier without first giving them a chance to rectify what is wrong.

 

Bogs

When I first started, like most, I bought the tooling that looked good value for money but as my standards of accuracy increased, its shortcoming became more apparent. I must have at least two far eastern R8 arbor with tapers for Jacobs chucks that are beautifully finished but are eccentric more than .002". The problem is that once the trust has gone, you tend to avoid certain retailers unless you can actually see the goods at a show before buying. Obviously for some tooling, dimensional accuracy is not an issue but for stuff that matters, it's either well branded equipment for me or if the item is potentially expensive, well branded second hand equipment.

 

Materials is another issue. A very well known retailer here beginning with 'C' sells chuck backplates, in this case beautifully machined and accurate in steel (this may have now changed). Fine for occasional use but steel against a steel lathe spindle is not good from a wear point of view which is why backplates should be cast iron. OK, that's not a biggie but does illustrate that cheapness or ease of manufacture comes before appropriateness. Retailers are bright. They're not there to do you a favour. They exist to sell goods. You get what you pay for.

Hi Bogs, my sentiments exactly, your supplier should aways be given thier chance first. I have had things from high street shops with problems, have taken them back and explaned politely the problem and have had them changed, no hassel.

Hi Chris, not sure if your steel against steel in this context really has a wear issue, as it is does not have any movement once mounted and in use. I have steel backplates on some of my chucks and have not noticed any problem. they are of course cleaned and lightly oiled prior to mounting them.

Posted by Bogstandard on 22/11/2010 10:24:08:

don't know if they still are, but when I bought my lathe in 1986, the sales man at the Co I purchased it from had just returned from visiting the factory in Taiwan, where he discovered that they made the beds for Colchester lathes, he was told that Colchester bhad the beds made in Taiwan, and mad the heads in England.Ian S C

 

That sounds like piecework pressures, like the dodgy wobbly tolerances of our own 1950s and 1960s British motor industries.

Crank 'em out by the squillion or you don't get paid, accuracy is secondary. sell! sell! sell!

 

I made my first ever collet chuck, a biggie for some old ward captan lathe collets, never done anything like it before...ever...and managed 0.0015".

 

Even my old unimat toy lathe is accurate to a hundredth or two of a millimeter.

 

 

Sorry about the length of this post but I think that we should all know and demand our rights under Law,

 

Only one person here has mentioned the 'Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended)'.

 

In the UK this is a very powerful piece of legislation meant to protect the rights of a buyer.  Under this law when you buy a product the process is defined as a contract and there are certain conditions that the product must fulfil. They must be:-

 

It is the responsibility of the seller to ensure these conditions and any problems are also their responsibility, not the manufacturers.  This is because your contract is with the seller not the manufacturer.  Depending on the product, if these faults appear in the first 6 months and you inform the seller in this time you can demand a refund, after this period you have up to 6 years to claim (Scotland 5 years) and can ask for compensation, usually a repair, replacement or cash compensation depending on the use you have had.  Of course the time scales vary according to the perishable nature of the goods.  Don't expect to claim for stale bread after 6 months

 

In the examples in this thread I would have said that legally the lathe with sand in crucial places and rusty components was neither 'satisfactory, 'as described' ("superb quality") or 'fit for it's purpose'.

 

The same could be said for an incomplete 'set' of BA taps or a marking gauge that would not clamp or a brazed on carbide tip which 'fell off''.

 

The actions taken should be to inform the supplier and ask for action under this act.  If they refuse to act you can use the Small Claims procedure to take a supplier to court and claim both the cost of the purchase or repair and the court costs.  Most suppliers will not let the actions go that far.  There are sample letters on Trading Standards web sites that can act as a template. See here for Leicestershire's T.S. examples

 

What you should not do is to try to fix the faults yourself and then moan on a forum like Victor Meldrew, That gets no-one anywhere except high blood pressure.  Only if we all complain properly and use the law, if necessary, will sellers get the message and get these things put right at the manufacturers.

 

Phew

 

Terry

Before you all say he should have contacted Warco first etc why not read the captions under the photos, it would seen Warco have already supplied this lathe as a replacement.

 

"But we get what we pay for, even though this machine and the even worse one it replaced is advertised as 'Superb quality'."

Sam Stones,

 

Many thanks for pointing out how to find the photos and captions.

 

John S,

 

Not asking for PC, but am asking for politeness. If you re-read what I said, you will see that I said something like "By all means tell people they are wrong, but do it politely." By all means call a spade a shovel, but not a bloody shovel! It's demeaning when done in print and in public.

 

Regards,

 

Peter G. Shaw

It seems to be common knowlege that many  Chinese lathes and mills contain sand and swarf when puchased and are so unfit for use - as supplied-  because that use could result in self destruction.

 

However every warrenty I have seen has a "do not dismantle or modify " clause. If you open the box and take it apart then  put it back together - without a real workshop manual- then how can the supplier then be held liable?

 

So you might think that there is a Catch 22 , how do you know it is safe to use your new machine without taking it apart and invalidating the warrenty?

 

The way out is for the UK distributors to insist that the machines they buy  are fit for use from the packing as that is the legal need  within the UK. If they want to continue to sell products that may be defective as supplied then they need to inspect and re-work to get the machines to the required UK standard. Arc seem to be the only supplier who do admit to the sand issue and describe what needs to be done. Come on Suppliers, it is not fair to supply nice people who may be on a last time purchase with machines that may be self destructive. It also happens to be illegal.

 

Regards

Alan.

 

 

You obviously get plenty of metal for your money and as an owner of an old Super 7 with all it's size limitations I am tempted by the shiny offerings of Warco etc but as a Toolmaker I don't know if I could accept their shortcomings albeit at a very reasonable price.

I really can't get my head around the mentality of manufacturers who allow sand and swarf etc to contaminate what is meant to be a precision machine tool, I suppose they are trying to shave every extra penny off the cost.

Tony

Posted by Tony Pratt 1 on 22/11/2010 17:47:48:

 

Well judging by the amount of casting sand they are giving away, you'd have thought that they might well have been wanting to save on that too...

 

The purchaser may have intended to buy a precision machine but it's demonstrably true that this is not what the manufacturers are primarily interested in selling at all, is it? As to whether the supplier in this country would have any redress against a Chinese manufacturer (which is one of the issues here) is, to say the least, dubious. How many lathes and mills would Warco (or any of the other suppliers) sell at all if they were absolutely truthful in their product descriptions? Answer is probably just as many - simply because there is no alternative choice within the price bracket that the majority can afford. So where's the incentive for anybody in the chain to do anything about this at all? I'd say it doesn't exist. So what happens instead is that the few people who make massive complaints get something done about it, but the majority either invalidate warranties, or put up with it. And when the machines finally get beyond the pale, they either get another one or give up. That appears to be fine; the suppliers can afford to fall over backwards for a few people (and they clearly do), and the manufacturers have to do nothing that will actually cost them anything at all. Bogs made a point earlier that a few things have been changed because of complaints - I wonder how many of those things actually cost any real money to implement?

It's worth noting that Arc sell their machines at two price points - one cheaper as imported, and one for a stripped, cleaned and adjusted machine. This is an honest and transparent way of dealing with the issues above.

 

When I bought my mill from Arc, I was told it had a mod that cured a problem, but not what the mod was (I'm guessing a steel gear to replace the plastic one?) A blown speed card (due to a loose screw shorting it) was replaced straight away, although I understand they have discontinued this model (X3) because of an unrelated conrtroller board issue.

 

Neil

There seems to a big difference between retailers of these machines - in these threads there are people strongly supporting Warco, and others condemning them. I have an identical machine to the one shown at the head of this thread right down to the colour, but it was bought from RC Machines in Trier, Luxembourg. The machine was in perfect condition when I bought it about 4 years ago - it was clean, no trace of sand, swarf etc - I don't know if that was how it was supplied by the factory, or if RC had prepared it pre-sale, but I mention just to show that however these machines leave the factory, some suppliers do provide a good service.

 

I also have a version of the minilathe sold in England by Clarke (CM300), only I bought mine from Rotwerk in Stuttgart - again nothing but satisfaction - and it did run 'straight from the box' - I even got a calibration certificate with it.

 

So it seems to me that as someone here said - Let the buyer beware. It must be very confusing for beginners particularly when they ask for recommendations in these forums, and they end up with a long string of contradictory views - it seems to me that the only reliable way to make an assessment of these machines is to personally inspect the machine before buying, which is not always possible.

 

I hope John Stevensons earlier comments are not going to be the norm - some of the American engineering forums have been destroyed by abusive comments, bad language and off-thread content - Jens and others are entitled to their opinions, and if you don't agree, by all means point them out - don't start a fight.

Posted by Steve Garnett on 22/11/2010 19:03:50:

 

  Exactly, it certainly costs time and money for the factory to clean parts before the parts are machined ready for assembly. Produce as many as possible in a short time and save costs for cleaning

Read about the plant's claims about "HOW WE CONTROL QUALITY?" in the Brief :  http://www.weiss.com.cn/brief.htm

The Chinese box is full of surprises.  If you really want this machine tool you want in the workshop room, I would recommend taking the total cleaning and lubrication of machine tools to be sure they will last long. It is the best guarantee against future surprises by opening the machine tool for inspection when it really something wrong with them after a few hours of use in the tool room.