[TheForge] Conventional wisdom- Wrong again?

[Andrew Vida]

Now personally, I think there is some truth to all three of these =
arguments,
but theres more to this picture than that.

	Well, yah.  Things of this sort are rarely as simple as certain
	avenues would have you believe.



But what if I wanted a slightly larger CNC machine? the
asians would clean our clock again, right? well, no- I could have spent =
5
grand more than the bridgeport, and gotten a Haas, made in Ventura
California.

	Not familar with Haas.  I have found that in general, the Japanese
	CNC setups are very very good, and the Mori Seikis are considered
	to be just about the best going.  However, the finest, and one of the
	most ball-bustingly expensive CNC machines I have ever seen is made
	by Hardinge.  For most work, the Japanese machines are fine and will
	hold 0.0003" tolerances consistently for a long time, but if you want
	to hold 0.0001" tolerances, the Hardinge is the way to go.  They were
	second only to Schaublin for repeatable accuracy, and Schaublin is now
	defunct, so Hardinge is pretty well top dog on the planet.

	One thing you will notice about the Japanese machines is that their
	controllers are, AFAICS, all made in the USA (e.g. GE FANUC), so
	yeah, the USA isn't out of the picture, but I think shipping off most
	of the heavy industry may have been a mistake.

	You make a VERY interesting point on the decentralization of =
manufacturing
	here.  I'd not thought of that in terms of warfare.  If we ever came =
under
	any serious attack, we would now be less vulnerable than when =
everything
	was located in highly concentrated industrial areas.  Of course, any =
sort of
	serious attack on the USA these days would probably involve nuclear =
devices,
	so perhaps the point is moot.