Re: Made in China??


[Follow Ups] [Post Followup] [Dodge Power Wagon Forum]


Posted by D Sherman on Monday, July 21, 2008 at 14:20:21 :

In Reply to: Made in China?? posted by Dan Shockley on Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 20:25:08 :

That's a good discussion of a complex issue. Like it or not, the whole world is one big economy now and it's mighty hard to get totally away from it. I remember when a lot of manufacturing in the US moved from the Great Lakes area to the South and people thought that was bad because the Southerners were non-union and got paid less. Then manufacturing moved to the maquiladoras in Mexico and Ross Perot talked about the "sucking sound" of American jobs heading south. Now, from what I read, thee Mexicans are hurting because the maquiladoras have closed up and the manufacturing has moved to China. Now in China they're having demonstrations all the time for better wages and working conditions (though the government tries to keep it out of the news).

It seems to me that in the long run, one of two things will happen. Either the oil will run out and it will no longer be economical to ship raw materials to the far side of the world, and manufactured products back again, so we'll be forced to make do with what we can make or grow locally, or workers will end up getting paid about the same no matter where they live, and so there won't be any great advantage to continually moving the factories to wherever labor is currently cheap.

I don't mind that the Chinese are finally getting a chance to make a little money and thus have a little bit of independence and control over their own lives. What does concern me, especially with something like this, is quality control. Dan, I'm sure you're keeping a close watch on things to make sure the steel is of the specified grade, the dimensions are held to the correct tolerances, and the heat treating is done right. The trouble is that with a lot of Chinese or Indian products, they know how to take a piece of metal and make it into something that superficially appears to be more or less the right shape, but that's as far as their "engineering" goes. Steel alloys are particularly problematic because until the thing breaks, you have no way of knowing that it was made out of random melted down junk that might not even have been mixed very well. There have been a lot of problems with Chinese rebar, for example, and that's not even a high-precision machine part. Also, the typical modern "cast iron" made out of remelted scrap isn't nearly as tough as old American castings made from virgin ore.

As far as tolerances, I was just at an equipment parts dealer getting some things for my cat. One of the wear items is a cast and machined brass collar that moves the clutch in and out on the shaft. The colar is stationary, and it engages a rotating flange. It serves the function of a throw-out bearing except it works in both directions. Unfortunately it's only drip-lubricated by oil, and has no ball or roller bearings in it, so it wears out. They had 3 aftermarket colars on the shelf. I tried them all in various combinations both on my flange and on another take-out flange they had there, and none fit right. Not only did they not fit, but different ones jammed up in different spots depending on which part wasn't machined right. We're talking 5-10 thou off, on simple circular cuts in easy-to-machine brass. They were all on the tight side, so presumably a machinist could fixture them somehow and finish them properly, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having them made cheaply overseas. The guy there didn't know for sure where they came from, but I'm guessing India because they're brass.

Maybe this all means I'm more concerned about the product itself than about the philosophy of where it's made. I know there are lots of big problems with "globalization" in general, but for the most part it seems like can't individually do much about it it. What we can do, however, is make sure that any given product that we're responsible for is made correctly, no matter who makes it.



Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
E-Mail:
Subject:
Message:
Optional Link
URL:
Title:
Optional Image Link
URL:


This board is powered by the Mr. Fong Device from Cyberarmy.com