Chinese Lathe Accessories.

Very sorry Alan not to have waited with baited breath for you next gems of deep and profound thought. I was busy having a life in my workshop and getting ready for the first of our family gatherings for the festive season.

I'll be more attentive to your needs in future, or perhaps I'll press the 'ignore member' button.

Best wishes for the season of goodwill !!

Terry

Haha, Rohm's steel backplates 'probably' come out of the same Chinese factory as ours...and I say that with a certain extent of factual cofidence. Surely they cant be fit for purpose then?

Ketan at ARC.

> How many new model engineers have started who otherwise would not have because a Chinese lathe was affordable?

Me for one!

And thanks to David for having the courage to remove the unacceptable.

Neil

Hi Ketan,

No offence taken, it's all quite amusing really,

As for why we enjoy it? I suppose it is for the same reason that people enjoyed Bear and Badger Baiting, Cock fighting and Bullfighting. But this is less cruel to animals. Time now for that button

Best regards

Terry

This is much less fun now I pressed the 'kill' button (first time ever for me)

Regards

T

Edited By Terryd on 16/12/2012 10:52:24

Hi Stub Mandrel

There are so many messages that we can do no more than glance at them for spam etc.

If anyone ever sees anything the moderators have missed, feel free to let us know.

regards David

David,

Even though I understand how some people see the said comment in a racial manner, I dont think that the stated post was intended in any racial way. I think it was more a sterio typical issue, as I see it. If you really want to see a border line sterio typical piss take of any culture, you should watch 'Live at the Appolo' on BBC1, where there is lot more stronger stuff...Indians piss taking their own culture, Americans and Brits doing the same...

Ketan at ARC.

Michael,

Since when have I slagged off a who;e nation? iF you care to read my post on this thread I have nothing but praise for my Chinese lathe and my Chinese milling machine.

On the subjest of Tooling /Workholding Early in my metal working hobby I purchased a set of ER40 collets and they were utter rubbish even the replacements were no better That was when I decided to fork out a lot of money for Rohm collets and the difference was staggering Now, I don't dispute that Chinese tooling has progressed over the last 10 years or so ,but as it is just now there is NO way it could be compared to Titex Guhring Dormer OSG and many others. How many production shops have you seen using Chinese tooling? One of the brothers is a foreman turner and I have seen the equiptment at his place of work and it is all High end gear DMG , Mori Seiki WFL Millturn ,and guess what? NO chinese tooling /workholding.

Regards,

Raymond.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the UK being uncompetitive

Russell

Raymond,

With the greatest of respect, there is a lot of stereo typical myth.

A lot of the branded tooling you see DOES come out of China. Some of it also DOES come out of India, including the ROHM stuff. If you take the Rohm stuff for example, I have been in Chinese and in Indian factories where their stuff is made. I have also been in factories where M&W measuring stuff is made, and I have been in factories where the other high end gear you refer to is made. Some of it is in certain component form. Some of it is in finished form. In most cases, depending on how critical the part/product is, the final finishing or inspection is either done back in the brands respective homeland, or it is allowed to be packed in the origin country. If you read earlier threads, you will find comments about non-disclosure agreements.

There after, a lot of marketing spin takes over. A lot of the said stuff you may not see on the hobby engineering market, as hobby engineers simply wont pay for it, as/or there is no need for it in a hobby environment, which is non-production based. this myth is not exclusive to British engineers. Indian and Chinese engineers also think like you.

I have seen certain carbide tooling come out of specific exclusive (means expensive) Chinese factories, come into Europe, only to be exported back to China through a trading company because of a branding. To prove a point, I got very angry with a team of engineers in the SIEG CNC machine plant one day and asked them to use a particular carbide end mill on a work piece, to prove my point of a particular Chinese carbide end mill being better than a particular western branded piece of s**t. I told them that the end mill which they had just tested was Chinese, only after they sang praises of how good this particular 'presumed western' end mill was!

Still, there is a 'faith in consistency' issue, which is understandable, and which is something that premium brands are able to maintain successfully. This is understandable, becasue in a production environment, the finished product needs to be consistent, resulting from known reliable consistant brand tooling.

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 16/12/2012 11:41:47

Hi Dias Costa,

I understand that you buy your tooling from U.K. and that it makes not sense for you to buy lathes and milling machines from U.K.. You are definitely entitled to your opinion and I respect this.

When we were offering the preparation service, I would have responded that ARC could take on Optimum any day against one of our like for like prepared machines, and ours would have been better - guaranteed, and I would have put a bet on it, without question.

Now that we do not offer this service, the factory assembly issue vs Optimium would be similar. When the machine is stripped - some we would win, some they would win. On issue of branding - Optimum would win. On issue of back-up service and parts, we would be broadly similar. Obviously, the Chinese partner of Optimum will not agree with me. He is a powerful man with a lot of financial and political strength - which may be higher then SIEGs...but difficult to confirm clearly.

Optimums Chinese partnership in Yangzhou city is complex. They do do a good product, and their power ensures that the sub-contractors are kept in check. Directly Optimum badged stuff does come into the U.K., and non-badged Optimum but built in the same sub-contractor factory also comes into the U.K. via other dealers such as Chester and Warco. So far, we only deal with SIEG, mainly because we have a good relationship with SIEG, and we only want to deal with problems of one factory.

QC inspectors, be it Optimums or anyone elses are two a penny and not strictly useful, due to a verity of reasons which we cannot get into. In China, the only thing that matters is how rich and politically powerful you are

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 16/12/2012 12:03:30

Edited By Ketan Swali on 16/12/2012 12:03:56

Hi. Just out of interest, is it a real risk for a cast iron chuck to disintegrate? I'm guessing the speed has to be extremely high? Like I say, was just interested as I've never heard this before.

Thanks, Mike.

Come on Alan, wake-up, I still need to know how I have not answered your question correctly

Ketan at ARC.

Hi Ketan

Good to have someone here who knows what he is talking about!

On a slightly off-topic point you say that you have ceased to provide a preparation service for your machines and, had I been in the market for machinery, I think this would have been a strong point in your favour. Is it that such preparation is not now necessary or is there just insufficient demand for such a service?

Regards

Norman

Edited By NJH on 16/12/2012 12:27:01

Hi Norman,

Earlier, someone mentioned about the preparation, and I replied with my reasons. You will need to scroll up around page 2. It was all to do with what new entrants to the hobby chose to believe especialy linked to the budgets they had.

Ketan at ARC.

But are you any good at preparing a curry Ketan ?

I'd like to describe this thread as riveting.

But I'd hate to be accused of taking it off topic, so I won't.

Pete

Hi Mike

Yes the risk of any piece of metal being spun an a machine and disintegrating is real - VERY real - the question is how big is that risk. Unfortuinately it is almost impossible to answer in a model engineering environment as a lot of our machines and tooling are quite old - often second, third of forth hand and we have no way of knowing how they have been used or abused in the past. Bursting due to overspeed is a resuly of the forces generated overcoming the tensile strength of the material and cast iron is not good under tensile stress steel is much better.

Some chucks have a speed limit marked on them - it's there for a reason.

In reality, at the speed we operate our machines at, while the risk is real, provided thnat the chuck or material is in good condition, that risk is very small, but I wouldn't want to be around a 12 inch chuck of unknown provenance running at 3k rpm upwards unless I'd done some inspection on it myself. To put things in context car wheels at 60 mph are spinning at about 720 rpm and we don't often see those burst apart, although they are made of ductile metals which will withstand tensile stresses.

The real problem is that generally we just don't know if there are any faults, such as cracks, in the material (especially cast iron) that could render it potentially dangerous.

When I earned a living one of the areas of my work (30years ago) involved running high speed machine components up to the point of failure - think of a disk the size of a saucer and made from either maraging steel or one of he higher strength hiduminiums. Burst speeds were in the order of 1200 Hz (72,000 rpm)- newer machines are now opertaing at over 100,000rpm - believe me, we had a LOT of material between us and the disk!!

Keith

.

You can keep the mistletoe but I really miss those virgins.................................................

Thanks Ketan

Yes I can see your point. Sorry I just missed your post yesterday - it was all coming so thick and fast - I guess I must have blinked!

Now I see we are diverting into misletoe and virgins - for goodness sake guys get out to your sheds, find a big lump of metal and a coarse file, and make a heap of filings. It will take your mind off things.

N

All over Spain there are 'Chinese markets'  - shops which sell mostly low cost Chinese goods. There are at least four in my nearest town and I live in the back of beyond.

Virtually nothing they sell works properly, sometimes it doesn't work at all. Glue that won't stick, files that won't cut metal, pens that don't write, spanners made of cheese etc etc
I'm a tool snob, I admit it. If it isn't Snap On, Facom etc I don't want to know. But every so often I weaken and buy something DIY related from a Chinese market. Like a hammer - I mean even the Chinese can't screw up making a hammer - can they ? Yes, they can, they can make anything badly.

Back in the UK we had a local hardware store that sold Chinese goods. I once asked my wife to get me a new radio for the workshop and said " Do NOT buy it from GeeJays " because she can't resist a bargain, even if it isn't really a bargain. Back she came with this thing that looked like it was meant to receive Henry Halls Dance Orchestra and rousing speeches by Winston Churchill. When I switched it on all it did was hiss. It actually received nothing at all. So I said to her " You bought this from GeeJays, didn't you ? " to which she replied " But it was only a pound ! "
How can you argue with logic like that ?

Norinco do make a nice clone of the AK-74 assault rifle though, I'll give 'em that...

Edited By Siddley on 16/12/2012 13:19:55