Thursday, November 29, 2012

Where We Went in China

This Google map shows the cities we visited in China. It took a few days to go through all the hotel receipts, business cards, and such to compile it.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Carbide, Carbide, Carbide

On Saturday we visited five or six carbide factories. One reason we were able to visit so many is that they are all within a mile of each other. This is not unusual in China. The first factory we visited is the oldest. Over the years people left that factory and started their own. Now there are about 60 in this “village”.

These are “round” carbide factories. They are grinding tools out of solid carbide. So, for example, to make an end mill, they start with a round blank slightly larger in diameter and slightly longer than the finished end mill. They grind the blank to finished diameter and length, and then grind the flutes.

While grinding the blanks may be done on fairly simple machines, grinding of the cutting edges is mostly done on CNC grinders.

(Click the photos for a larger view.)

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This tray is next to a CNC grinder. You can see blanks at the bottom and cutting tools at the top. I’m not sure what the tools are or if they’re finished at this point.

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It’s impossible to tell what is going on inside a CNC grinder. All you can see is a big spray of coolant. The spindle is horizontal at the top of the coolant “waterfall”. You can see where a second grinding wheel can be mounted on the right end of the spindle.

The original factory has some sophisticated CNC grinders, but it also has a lot of older equipment too.

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This is one of the better lit shops in the Changzhou Huake Tool Company. That’s because it has the largest windows.

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The Changzhou Huake Tool Company makes more than carbide cutting tools. This is a face mill. The lady who is looking at it is the purchasing agent for a company that actually uses tools this large. They make the machinery for making copper tubing. She spent the day escorting us to all these factories.

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This is a typical exterior view of the Changzhou Huake Tool Company. It was raining off and on and that is mostly water you see in the puddles. Let’s just say that things can get slippery on a wet day.

Let’s get back to grinding carbide.

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One of the plants we visited is as nice as any in the world. Wansui Tools uses all German machines, installed with proper ventilation add coolant filtering. Not a spec of dirt in this plant. There are another six grinders to the right of the columns at the right of this picture.

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Not all the plants are as nice as Wansui. This place has 10 machines crammed into a pretty darn small room. We did not recognize the brand of these CNC grinders.

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The metrology department includes all the proper instruments including this laser measuring device. We never figured out how many zeros to the right of the decimal this thing works to. Let’s just say it’s a lot.

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One of the nicer factories we visited made turning and milling tool holders for carbide inserts. Here’s an indexable turning tool that will probably not appear in the LittleMachineShop.com catalog.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

SIEG Visit

 

The latest from Chris in China:

I had a good meeting with SIEG while I was in Shanghai. You can expect to see some interesting products over the next months.

They were working on some LittleMachineShop.com machines while I was there.

(Click the photos for a larger view.)

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Here are some model 4200 lathes in final assembly. He’s test driving them to ensure everything operates properly.

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And yes, they really do check each LittleMachineShop.com machine to ensure it meets specifications.

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Here is a fleet of mini mill heads ready for the next step.

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Here are a couple of pallets off mini lathe beds ready for final grinding. I noticed them unloading a truckload of these as I was arriving.

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SIEG does the critical machining in their own shop. He’s setting up to grind the bed ways for a mini lathe.

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They are assembling electrical sub-assemblies such as control boxes.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Going to China Once Again

I'm headed to China next week, and I hope to resume blogging while I am there. I am writing this entry to help me remember how to do this.

I have to figure this out again, and then update Carl, as I know that I will not be able to post to this blog when I am in China. I have to email entries to Carl and he posts them on the blog.

I leave LAX on 5-Nov and I'll arrive in China midday on 7-Nov. You might see a blog as early as 9-Nov in the US.

images by photoeverywhere.co.uk