Vise grips tools

Have you ever see one of the injection molds they were selling to US customers four or five years ago, for 1/3 of our price? They looked like they were made by vo-tech school students who didn't have a teacher.

-- Ed Huntress

Outside of a pair made by Sears likely 20 years ago that I have, nothing other than Vise Grip brand pliers has passed my first inspection. The Chinese knockoffs just look cheap to me.

Now I wonder, where are Channelock pliers made currently?

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

those with a

child is a

I was with you up to the no problem solving part. The people that run the place like good ideas, some times intermediaries don't like any change or questioning of the way things are unless they thought it up themselves.

Of course I fix things, I guess most everyone would like me to solve problems ;)

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

I keep in mind that they have a space program and have nuclear weapons. That took a fairly high degree of technical ability.

They will get better.

Wes

Still in Meadville, PA, for now at least. :)

You haven't seen their improved cell phone clones the n Bill. I have a couple. Damned things are absolutely terrific. Half the price and more than twice the functionality. Twin Sims. I'm runnning the latest hardware and didn't have to sign up for a two year contract or a data plan I didn't want.

Beat that.

Ed, Mattel was one of my customers during my injection molding/tooling career. They'd have China build a mold and deliver it to my shop. We'd fix it up T&M and send it to Mexico to be run.

I also had them send in Asian tools from Hong Kong. We didn't even have to change the water fittings out when we press sampled them. Easiest five grand for a half day I ever made. We charged $300.00 per hour to dry material and got a letter in a frame on the wall saying thanks.

Imports aren't what is troubling the foundation of the US economy. Balance of trade issues aren't either. It's the overall math that doesn't work and you can slice it anyway you want but if America is going to try and compete with the Chinese we are going to be arguing about who has the newest bycicle.

I was raised by a generation that believed that the future of the next would be better than the previous. What we all did, including me, was hoard for ourselves the resources and national effort to make that a reality.

I doubt if they could have had a space program without a lot of help from foreign machine tools; probably foreign-made parts; and a lot of foreign engineering, bought or stolen.

As for their technical ability, it isn't in manufacturing, Wes. Almost everything they've accomplished has been with foreign management and foreign technology. They make engines for the Chevy Equinox...because GM essentially packed a factory into shipping containers and sent it to Shanghai. And then they sent their own management team over to manage it.

Everyone I talked to when I was writing my articles on foreign trade, including Hamei, and executives from Caterpillar, VW, Charmilles, etc. said that they can't do much without a lot of foreign input.

Of course, that will change over time. But the mountain they're climbing is steeper than a lot of people realize.

I guess I'll add a few more to my collection. The parrot nose models are great for running pipe btw.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Bill, You would have to grasp the Chinese cultural model of a manager to form an opinion. I've seen how this works at first hand. You wouldn't sit still for it for even 30 seconds, let alone a minute.

I bought some "jesse james" signed vise grips from Costco. About 2/3rds the cost of Irwin. Made by Stanley in China I believe. Anyone familiar with the usual useless Chinese versions would be able to tell right away that jesse's were far superior, and probably every bit as good as a quality original. They've held up quite well to years of abuse. The main reason that the usual Chinese ones are no good is that the manufacturers believe that the market is for dollar-a-piece models. They're probably right. How many young people have you met lately who can even change a tire? I hate to think of the percentage. There's little incentive for functionality when the vast majority of this stuff probably ends up in the bottoms of never-used toolboxes received as gifts.

They've been making a wide variety of quality for quite a while. I think that we see a preponderance of the worst stuff because it appeals to a lot of vendors who like the high profit margins of buying for a buck and selling for five. One of the local ones just gave up. Too much of his stock was comprised of terrible picks, and yet he tried to sell it for more than HF. I told him early on to make better inventory choices, but he thought that his experience of carrying glacially slow-selling over-priced Jet stuff was proof that customers only want the absolute cheapest crap. I was sure he could do better, but then I wasn't there every day to gauge his clientele. Met-enemy-us, yada yada.

Wayne

There's some insight into that phenomenon in _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ -- Matthew B. Crawford,

Well, I did specify tools and hardware type items (simple mechanisms or assemblies), not meaning to include circuit boards/computer hardware-type hardware. If there is no more effort put into quality and reliability of those phones, than there is for their tools and other hardware items shipped to the USA, then you were one of the buyers that was fortunate enough to get working products.

I don't think I'd appreciate the additional phone features, since I only need a phone to make calls or receive calls. However, made in China doesn't definitely indicate designed in China.

I realize that the Chinese manufacture some high tech products for some consciencious companies that still care about their own reputation, but the majority of Chinese goods produced for consumers, as far as household items, hardware such as hand and power tools, door hinges, plumbing fixtures, etc are very low grade compared to previously domestically-produced goods.

When a recognized brand name is put on products made in China, particularly for higher priced products and/or commercial products, they have very likely been at least closely inspected and possibly tested before going to distributors. I believe some products undergo more scrutiny than most consumer goods, which I suspect probably results in a considerable amount of product ending up in the fail/reject/rework bin, instead of making it out the door.

I'm not confused about what the Chinese "can" do.. I wasn't saying their capabilities are severely limited or crude, only that I haven't seen any hardware examples that are anything other than very low quality. Some examples would be loose fitting fasteners and fittings that are very likely made on CNC equipment, yet fit too loosely to hold when tightened. I don't think I've seen any threaded parts from China with any thread sizes that are even reasonably close to normally acceptable tolerances.

I wandered into a tool store today and looked at the current stock. They had both US and China made Vise Grip models on hand. Looked them over the the Chinese ones seemed to have a rougher finish, the knurling on the adjuster was not as sharp and the stamping seemed shallow.

I'd like to see a show of hands, indicating how many guys ever saw one of the Jeeps that were made in China.. when was that, in the 80s?

An entire manufacturing facility was built in China, and failed to turn out even one finished vehicle, IIRC. The entire project was a complete loss.

I wonder if the Chinese considered turning the plant into a weapons factory.

huh. i was traveling in china in '86. seemed at the time they'd just put in that jeep factory. i thought the jeeps i was seeing around shanghai were manufactured at that factory... but actually now i can't remember, maybe it was they were saying they WERE going to put in a jeep factory. at the time there were volkswagen jettas (i think it was jettas? golfs?) driving around. snazzy cars for china at the time, compared to those ubiquitous single cylinder water cooled lister(?) farm vehicles (they look like rear tine rototillers). i can't remember now if they were saying they were going to be building jettas there or that they had already started building them there. i'm forgetting the chronology. but, at the time, there were jeeps and jettas driving around (but not a lot of 'em, there were only just "a few" (was probably thousands of 'em but the shanghai area is pretty big) and it was kinda a big deal for the chinese.

b.w.

I understand there was a pretty fair business in that work for a few years. There hasn't been a lot of noise about molds from China lately. Did they get better, or did the molders who were buying them give up on it?

Hong Kong managers supposedly run some of the best shops in mainland China.

We aren't going to "compete" with China for many years. You can't "compete" with 80-cents/hour wages. And I don't mean that in terms of direct labor at the final product manufacturer. It's their entire supply chain.

Our relationship could be a good one, but if it is, it will be driven by a division of economic activity (comparative advantage) rather than head-to-head competition (absolute advantage).

There were Jettas. VW was the first Western car manufacturer to build substantial plants in China.

I talked to an exec with VW around six years ago and he said that their quality was improving then, but still not up to Western standards. The same word came from the Charmilles (EDMs) exec I interviewed for an article. As far as I know, VW still isn't exporting cars from China -- at least, not to the West.

-- Ed Huntress

Molders didn't buy tooling in this case Ed. Mattel, like GM and so many others before them, learned that it was important to own their tools. What happened in the end was they put up a big mold shop in Mexico and did all of the rebuilds there. They also began buying significant amounts of product directly from Chinese sources.

That was what I meant.

In the long run, America's best interests are served by a prosperous China. The difficulty is that we have spent the last 30 years ceding the industrial and technological field to everyone else around the globe. There are, of course, exceptions.

GE, is one but if you look a little at America's GE's you see that they aren't American companies at all anymore. The technologies and products these companies are prospering with are world market stuff.