A Darn Big Trade Show

I can’t find anything that says the Canton Fair is the largest trade show in the world, but I suspect it is, at least by some measure. It’s far larger than any other I’ve attended, and I’ve been to at least a few large ones (remember Comdex?).

The Canton Fair, officially called the China Import and Export Fair is held at the China Foreign Trade Centre. This complex is over 1/2 mile long and comprises 16  halls, most of which contain multiple floors (up to 4).

A snapshot can’t start to show the scale of this place because it can only show a small percentage of the buildings.

This walkway is between two sections of the facility. It’s at least a quarter mile long, but is only abut half as long as the main walkway down the center of the building.

Because of a lack of space, the fair must be held in three phases, with the product categories split between phases. Each phase is 5 days long with a three day break between to change exhibits to the different product categories. Following are the product categories. Note that they are not too restrictive.

Phase 1

• Electronics & Household Electrical Appliances
• Lighting Equipment
• Vehicles & Spare Parts
• Machinery
• Hardware & Tools
• Building Materials
• Chemical Products

Phase 2

• Consumer Goods
• Gifts
• Home Decorations

Phase 3

• Textiles & Garments
• Shoes
• Office Supplies, Cases & Bags, and Recreation Products
• Medicines, Medical Devices and Health Products
• Food

What’s to see?

Here is a view of one of the halls from one level up.

Note the product category is ‘large machinery’. Not ‘metalworking machinery’, or such like. That’s a pretty broad category and that is born out by the types of machinery on exhibition.

Need to make rope? That’s an interesting machine.

Fill a bottle? There were all manner of package making and filling machines.

Make Oreos? This machine adds the crème filling between the two cookies.

Make concrete. Some vendors used models, but the real thing is outside.

Yes, there were metalworking machines too,

Plus food mixers and press brakes.

And diaper-making machines.

In summary, everything you can imagine. And this is in just one hall.

There were the usual Chinese safety guards. The plastic shield around the sides of this red hot induction heated steel rod provides plenty of protection.

And it’s only needed because the whole display is in the isle of the trade show. Look mom, what a pretty red…

And the usual great slogans.

SIEG had a booth there.

One of the amazing things about large gatherings of people in China is the lack of waiting in lines. We registered for the show in about 10 minutes, including meeting with three different departments because they couldn’t figure out what to do with us.

I’m guessing there were 150,000 attendees there, yet we waited abut two minutes for lunch in the largest food court I have ever seen. It’s about the size of a football field. This photo is taken from the center of the room. There are at least two McDonalds in this exhibition complex.

We  worked pretty hard to get through the sections we need to see, which were large machinery, small machinery, and tools. We only had a little time for the fun stuff like consumer electronics, motorcycles, construction equipment, and computers.

Weight lifting equipment

In-line skateboards.

You can’t just put the babies in the bicycle basket…

A pink scooter anyone? ((We saw one of these on the street in Shanghai)

Just writing this makes my feet sore. We figured we put in over 10 miles a day. That’s enough.

How Do You Make a Gage Block?

Yesterday we visited a gage block factory. Making gage bocks is an interesting process. This factory can make about 1000 blocks a day.

Gage blocks come in several grades. The most common is a grade for use in the shop called AS-2. These are typically within 25 millionths of an inch of the size marked.

Better gage blocks are grade AS-1. These are within +8 and –4 millionths of an inch. And grade 0 gage blocks are within +4 and –2 millionths of an inch of the marked size.

Here’s how they are made. They start with the raw material that is sawed to size. The steel is a special grade called “Gage Block material”.

The first step is surface grinding. This gets them to the rough size. It probably finishes the non-working surfaces.

Next is rough lapping. These machines work on a lot of gage blocks at a time. The rough lapping machines are in the machine shop.

Here is what that machine looks when it is open. The gage blocks go on the silver doughnut.

These intermediate lapping machines are in more of a lab environment. They are getting the gage blocks closer to size.

At this point the gage blocks are laser marked with their size. They also get a serial number. The bright dot near the right center is the laser at work.

Now the gage blocks move to final lapping. Each workbench has a lapping machine and a comparator. The gage blocks go back and forth between the lapping machine and the comparator several times.

Here is a lapping machine opened up. The gage blocks go in the rectangular holes in the yellowish disk.

The operators spend most of their time measuring.

Once finished, the gage blocks are given a final measurement.

This is where the various grades are separated. The measurements are recorded and the gage blocks separated by grade. The gage blocks that ‘make the grade’ are put in the grade 0 or grade AS-1 piles. Those that don’t go in the AS-2 pile.

The gage blocks are oil coated and wrapped. Ever notice how neat the wrapping is? She is doing a block about every two seconds.

Finally, the gage blocks are put in sets.

The plant is adding an inventory of pin gages. Just setting up the inventory is a daunting task. These women are sorting a shipment of pin gages. The will go on the blue shelves on the right.

Pin gages come in sizes from 0.011 to 0.500, by 0.001 inches. That’s 490 sizes. But you can get “minus” pin gages and “plus” pin gages, so that doubles the number to 980 sizes. Metric? That’s more sizes.

A Train Ride

We rode the train from Beijing to Qingdao. That’s a distance of about 490 miles (790 Km). On the high speed train it takes 5 hours and 45 minutes.

The first time I took this trip on a train it was an overnight sleeper that took over 12 hours.

The train is moderately high speed. Top speed I saw was 244 KPH, which is 152 MPH. We maintained this speed for the first couple hours, but then the speed was reduced as track conditions changed. The slowest sustained speed I saw was 164 KPH, or 100 MPH. The slower we went, the rougher the ride because of poorer track. At full speed the ride was very smooth. It was never a bad ride.

The Beijing South Railway Station is fairly new, and looks like an airport. It’s only for high speed trains. There are 24 tracks. A train leaves each track about every 15 minutes.

Leaving Beijing we passed a lot of factories…

and freeways.

Once clear of the city, we passed cities, villages, and farms. Never in the 490 miles did we see undeveloped land.

There’s lots of agriculture, but all that we saw was pretty small scale. Farms reaching to the horizon, but not fields reaching to the horizon. Most of the crops appeared to be vegetables, so huge fields are probably not appropriate. And the labor input is pretty high, as illustrated by this guy hand-watering.

Several areas were covered with greenhouses. These greenhouses don’t just stretch as far as you can see in the snapshot. They really do reach the horizon. I have  no ideas how many acres are covered with these low greenhouses.

We saw many, many apartments under construction.

Never built one at a time, I’ve seen up to 35 buildings going up in a complex.

If you look between the buildings under construction in the photo below, you will see something that appears at any construction site-- worker housing. Its always blue and white, and always constructed out of sheet metal.

We think this is a fish farm. Couldn’t read the sign.

We saw plenty of older-style homes too. I say older-style because these appear to be brand new.

There is lots of industry. From small factories to large industrial complexes.

We saw coal trains…

coal yards…

and coal-burning power plants.

And many views of everyday life.

 

 

 

It was a very interesting trip, and a great way to see everyday life in China.