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Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

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Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#241

Post by voxadam »

bityard wrote: post #146
thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great YouTube channel, Project Farm ( https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos ), that features a single guy testing, grading, and comparing all kinds of things you might find in your garage. He's not sponsored and tries to be objective throughout the process. It isn't perfect but he puts a ton of effort in and for backyard science it's pretty good. Anyway, he mentions country of origin for a lot of too…

For hand tools, the highest rated brands tend to be German or Japanese, with US made tools coming in second or third. Just my observation, anyway.

Some the the best power tools come from Liechtenstein. Hilti makes a solid tool but they're far from cheap.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#242

Post by hinkley »

bluGill wrote: post #170
CraigJPerry wrote: post #79

I noticed at the most recent Milwaukee power tools event that they’re really going all in on specialist tools. This is a strong signal that they’re going to continue to cream the competition because irrational or not, people end up preferring a single battery platform, it’s not guaranteed they’ll stick to one brand for future power tool purchases but it’s extremely sticky. The Milwaukee battery power tool ecosystem s…

Dewalt seems to have at least as good a catalog of battery powered stuff. Things change all the time, a few years ago I settled on dewalt because I needed a chainsaw and Milwaukee didn't have one: now they do, but too late as i'm invested in dewalt batteries.

The usual advice is to figure out which tool you need the most, and pick the brand that has one of the best, then buy other devices in that line as you need them, to reuse the batteries and chargers. For me it was drills, and maybe circular saws, and Milwaukee was top on the former and top three on the latter at the time, so that’s what I went with. If I’d been more into saws or hand routers, I might have gone with Makita.

Mind you, this was around when their second or third generation M18 line came out, which was quite a bit better than the other things on offer. Today that has likely all shifted around two or three times.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#243

Post by DubiousPusher »

padiyar83 wrote: post #186
stacktrust wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western countries don't really have the infrastructure, housing or education necessary Why do non-Western elites send their kids to Western countries for university educations? > increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality. Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

> Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity? As I see it, Asian economies like India, China, Japan, South Korea offer a reasonable competition to Western economies today. 1. Samsung is a very viable competitor to Apple in hand held + wearables creative space. 2. Indian fin-tech solutions IMO today are some of the best in the world. All I need is a phone to shop for things (from buying a car to paying fo…

Um, TSMC sources many parts which are made exclusively in America. The machines TSMC uses for all of its highest end semiconductor work come from a company called ASML which whilst being a Dutch company sources many of its most sophisticated parts from the U.S. and Europe. But before we bother to argue about what is and is not a knowledge economy, humor me this one possibility.

Perhaps there is no such thing as a "knowledge" economy. At least not in a mass sense. Maybe instead the design knowledge which will drive automation is derivable from only a fraction of the population. That is only a small fraction of the population is capable or necessary for producing this knowledge. Perhpas the Utopia in which every child achieves a doctorate in engineering, medicine, etc was just a fantasy.

Perhaps the people who most perpetrated this story were motivated to. Because they were either complicit in the dismantling of the West's lower middle class economy or perhaps because they were apologists of untrestrained "free markets" and they needed a way to square their dogma without seeming cruel.

Perhaps the consequences of globalization minus the dogmatic fantasy of "everyone will be educated into being einstein" left the nagging uncomfortable suspicion that growth had its limits and someday we would have to admit that the only answer to making sure an equitable portion of wealth made its way into everyone's pockets wasn't an endless growth, every mom blasting their womb with Bach, an STM on every crib nerdocracy but instead gasp dare I say it? Redistribution!?

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#244

Post by ddingus »

petestream wrote: post #130
stacktrust wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a start. Next step is automation-heavy U.S. production of specific components.

It's more like the endgame. 1. Western companies moves production of components to China. 2. Chinese companies becomes good enough to produce their own products. 3. Western companies starts rebranding Chinese products. 4. Chinese companies buy western companies. 5. Chinese companies open factories in western countries. Manufacturing isn't industry in itself and the growth of industry is orders of magnitude more in Ch…

Some companies understood the value of maintaining their own education.

Every so often I like to link this:

Tektronix: "The Spirit of Tek"

https://vintagetek.org/opb-oregon-experience-the-spirit-of-t...

The video can be found when one looks around some.

Tek, under the leadership of Howard Vollum, literally built the whole region around it up. People could walk in off the streets and end up designing products, in sales, even doing a startup that Tek would help to fund.

I am a product of that culture, and learned a freaking ton from that place and the people who were in and around it.

When Howard Died, the private equity game chopped it all up and it's a shadow of what it once was.

Investments in the local people, partnering with schools, other manufacturers, all add up.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#245

Post by recursv_thnkng »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #94
stacktrust wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A handful of DeWalt power tools are "assembled from global materials" in USA, https://www.allamericanmade.com/where-are-dewalt-tools-made/ Jackson, TN Air compressors Hempstead, MD Drill and saw components Charlotte, NC Cordless drills, screwdrivers Greenfield, IN Grinder, recip saws, hammer drills

That manufacturing process is the result of bean counters determining it's a waste to ship boxed products that are 50% air overseas in a container. Ship the broken down components instead with denser packing and have a minimum wage worker bolt it together stateside. It isn't an enlightened return to domestic production.

There are tax implications as well when shipping fully assembled products. The big auto manufacturers have done this to avoid tariffs on vehicle imports.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#247

Post by hankman86 »

Non-American here: Made in USA isn’t a marker for quality any longer. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. These days, I make an effort to not buy American products. I wish that was different, but rarely have I seen this mix of carelessness and poor quality control without any attention to detail.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#248

Post by hayst4ck »

dnissley wrote: post #229
hayst4ck wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying another country to do something is a transfer of value and power (money). It creates a relationship of dependence. You become dependent on them for labor. Dependence is a base form of power. An entities power over you is proportional to their replace-ability. The individual business decision is sound, but the collective business decision is catastrophic. Not only does it create an economies of scale for advers…

> the prospect of war Are you claiming that trade dependence between countries makes war between them more likely?

China sent missiles over Taiwan last week. To me that clearly invokes the prospect of war with our largest trade dependency.

I am claiming that showing weakness by giving a powerful weapon (supply chain dependency) to an adversary invites them to see what they can get away with especially if they wish to conquer another country and you are their main blocker. Our supply chain dependency means China has a direct "cause pain" button they can push on America to cause political unrest or directly punish American involvement in China's "internal affairs." It is a tool they can use to try to make our elites present the Taiwan invasion, not as the conquering of a vibrant democracy, but as America's imperialist meddling in China's internal affairs. The supply chain can directly be used to extort our neutrality, just like Nord Stream was used to extort Germany's neutrality and corrupt Germany's elites. Is our defense posture better then that? Probably, but there is no denying Xi's China is getting more belligerent not less, which means they likely see the relative power shifts favoring them.

It is not the trade that I view as making war more likely, but the hard to replace dependency, namely Nord stream and the tech hardware supply chain.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#249

Post by jamisteven »

hankman86 wrote: post #247

Non-American here: Made in USA isn’t a marker for quality any longer. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. These days, I make an effort to not buy American products. I wish that was different, but rarely have I seen this mix of carelessness and poor quality control without any attention to detail.

Dont care to provide any examples eh?

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#250

Post by mantas »

dnissley wrote: post #229
hayst4ck wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying another country to do something is a transfer of value and power (money). It creates a relationship of dependence. You become dependent on them for labor. Dependence is a base form of power. An entities power over you is proportional to their replace-ability. The individual business decision is sound, but the collective business decision is catastrophic. Not only does it create an economies of scale for advers…

> the prospect of war Are you claiming that trade dependence between countries makes war between them more likely?

When do equal powers go to war? You go to war if you either have a massive advantage or you think you have a massive advantage. And war is just the last bit to enforce your power over the other entity.

Having the other side dependant on you in trade does give you a massive advantage.

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