[TheForge] Re: Taiwanese Machine Tools - and some Yak

Tue Sep 23 13:31:01 2003

Unfortunately almost NO ONE makes anything like the old South Bend Lathes, or Cincinnati mills, etc. 

Cincinnati used to be a center of the machine tool industry:
Cincinnati Milacron - formerly Cincinnati Milling Machine
Cincinnati Gilbert - radial drills
Lodge and Shipley - lathes, etc
Gray - VTLs
LeBlond - lathes

and on and on.

I spent two years working for Cincinnati Milacron before the big swan dive. The Wilmington, Ohio lathe plant used to make the beefiest cast iron bed lathes on the planet. As sales declined they started taking in other work to keep the plant open, including final machining of Okuma lathe beds.

The Okuma lathe beds are fabrications, whereas the Milacron lathe beds were serious grey iron. THe Okuma lathes had their ways welded in place and Milcron was doing the final grinding prior to assembly for Okuma. THe Milacron lathes had bolted in ways so that when they became worn, in say 20 or 30 years you could bolt in a new set of ways, whereas after the ways wore on the Okuma you tossed it. 

The Milacron people laughed at "How poorly the Okuma lathes were made" never catching the irony of the fact that they were kicking Milacron's butt in the market place because they were half the cost.

If you look now essentially all that is gone now, with a few exceptions. Leblond was bought out by Makino and all production shipped to the Pacific Rim, Milacron now essentially has sold off everything buy their plastics machinery business, which has a three year inventory.........meaning they aren't selling anymore, Grey was absorbed by Warner Swasey, then Kearney and Treacker, now.....? Lodge and Shipley is gone, and on and on...

Even my former employer GE Aircraft Engines is transferring engineering and production to mainland China!!!!! They have shipped purchasing to Mexico City, Accounts Payable to India, and if have had the chanse to call their 800 call center it is in Bangalore, India as well.

Our next generation will have to find jobs providing services to each other as we will have lost the ability to produce anything.

Ray Miller
Cincinnati

> 
> From: Andrew Vida <[email protected]>
> Date: 2003/09/23 Tue AM 11:55:22 EDT
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: Taiwanese Machine Tools - and some Yak
> 
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 07:26:03 -0400, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > I too have a hard time believing that machines made on the same line with 
> > different labels are significantly different. One difference does show up 
> > once the machine gets here in the company's support. If you dig around in 
> > the internet news archives, it's pretty easy to find excellent support 
> > stories after the sale concerning Jet (for instance). Try finding a 
> > similar story about Harbor Freight (for another instance).
> 
> 	I cannot speak for smaller tools, but in larger machine tools,
> 	there actually is a difference.  While the castings are precisely	
> 	the same, the machining, fit, and finish can vary significantly.
> >
> > So there are some differences. I still like used industrial tools over 
> > the lighter built new Asian import stuff, but used often means you wait 
> > until it shows up.
> 
> 	Not all the Asian stuff is crap, but it is indeed all inferior
> 	to the older US and European made machinery.  There is nothing
> 	coming out of Asia that will compare to an old South Bend, far
> 	less so a Hardinge or Bridgeport, for example.
> 
> 	I do not include Japan in this as Mori Seki and Okuma make some
> 	of the finest CNC machinery on the planet.
> 
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