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What happened to the US machine tool industry?

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Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#141

Post by nsguy »

hasty_pudding wrote: post #133
1nd1ansumm3r wrote: post #13

What was considered high-end precision machining a few decades ago is now standard and easily reproducible in cheap labor markets. For example, guitars made in SKorea used to be a bad joke. Their machining tolerances were too big and too inconsistent. Much like storage and bandwidth what used to be exotic cost-prohibitive is now cheap.

> guitars made in SKorea used to be a bad joke Are they now considered good guitars??

Yes. But really Indonesia has taken over from South Korea (and China and Mexico for some parts of the market). E.g. PRS used to make their SE line in South Korea and the quality was excellent. "Good guitar" is somewhat subjective. US brands like PRS, Gibson and Fender are still able to charge a premium for a US made instrument. This isn't necessarily because the US has some abilities that the foreign makers don't, it's more of a marketing strategy.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#142

Post by p_l »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #65
KevinMS wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do lathes actually wear out? Machine tools are built like tanks and could probably last until the end of time, you just need to replace the bearings and motors occasionally.

There's an entire refurbishment industry keeping them going. I know that this article said that you could order machine tools from Japan in the 1980s and get them in a few weeks. But that's not the case anymore. People buy some press or lathe or whatever out of a liquidation warehouse in Michigan for ~$50k and then pay a refurbisher $1,000,000 to get it to whatever specs they need. That's more expensive than buying a…

My understanding is that a lot of lower end in manufacturing might at time seriously consider turning old manual equipment into CNCs, not just hackers.

And dunno about USA, but there's a cottage industry of people running hacked up ex-volkswagen robots despite them requiring a human holding dead man switches. They are not going to buy a new industrial robot, but they can afford to turn bunch of ex-volkswagen gear into semi-automatic machines.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#143

Post by FirmwareBurner »

bllguo wrote: post #138
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Without the ability to quickly tool up, you'll end up defeated in any war of attrition. Why is this a risk? The biggest tool makers in the world are Germany and Japan which are in the US sphere of influence whether they want to or not and are therefore incentivized to sell to the US as many machines it would need to fight a war. The risk for Japan or Germany not wanting to sell tools to the US feels insignificant, a…

It appears the western public's understanding of geopolitical realities is always a decade behind. _Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone. We don't need to be talking hypotheticals, it is literally happening in real time. plus if a conflict like that occurs then clearly the US has lost significant power. so why would it be a given that American neo-colonies stay on its side?

>_Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone.

What? Don't know where you're getting your sources but NATO combined definitely can outproduce Russia. Why it isn't, is that Russia is in war mobilization mode with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort, while NATO's industry is still in peace-time mode because they're not under attack.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#144

Post by supernova87a »

Maybe I missed a point in the article, but I feel a broader shift that produced this situation is simply that the US is no longer building huge numbers of new factories and industrial processes that need lots of new machine tools.

We have left that phase of our country's development behind. We have relatively piecemeal demand for such tools, aside from the random new Tesla factory. And that kind of growth is what spurs development and maintenance of these kinds of supporting industries.

As a country, you fall out of the practice of building stuff, and the talent or ecosystem of it migrates away.

Look at railroad building. In China, they have entire industries of people building the tools for building railroads. They can call up 100 experts on design just for EV battery building machine tools and factory processes. Here you're lucky if you can find that many experts on any machine tool topic across all the contractor companies that have had to consolidate to make keeping this kind of talent sustainable. We just don't have this deep practiced industry knowledge in general across many businesses any more. And aside from some specialized centers (NASA, NIST, national labs) that doesn't exist much in the government either. We've outsourced it.

Maybe it's a natural evolution of a country. Maybe the tide can be turned with strategic investment, I don't know.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#145

Post by justsomehnguy »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #143
bllguo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears the western public's understanding of geopolitical realities is always a decade behind. _Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone. We don't need to be talking hypotheticals, it is literally happening in real time. plus if a conflict like that occurs then clearly the US has lost significant power. so why would it be a given that American neo-colonies stay on its side?

>_Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone. What? Don't know where you're getting your sources but NATO combined definitely can outproduce Russia. Why it isn't, is that Russia is in war mobilization mode with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort, while NATO's industry is still in peace-time mode because they're not under attack.

> with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort

Lol? Where are you getting your sources?

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#147

Post by hayst4ck »

specialist wrote: post #45
edgyquant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the answer to all American manufacturing woes. The dollar as a reserve currency gives the US a ton of global leverage but requires a trade deficit thus it comes at the expense of domestic industries.

I'd love to understand statements like this. Lemme try: Because trade deficits induce demand for dollars? Like how Japan and now China hold a bajillion US dollars? So if the US had (prolonged) trade surplus, no one would be holding dollars? But wouldn't trade partners still need US dollars to buy US goods? Like the situation post-WWII? So then we'd "loan" partners US dollars to buy our stuff? Aiugh. My brain just bro…

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

I think this video addresses the topic in question at a layman level.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#148

Post by roenxi »

psychlops wrote: post #21

> A strong dollar made imports even cheaper by comparison I think that summarizes the article. It has been cheaper to import, so we do. The strong dollar policy supports some industries at the expense of others.

There are three aspects to this - cost of manufacturing in the US, cost of manufacturing + shipping in China and exchange rates. I do think the relative dollar strength is a factor, but Chinese labour was effectively free vs US labour. If someone is willing to do work for free, then the economy will give them work.

The issue that the free marketeers have been railing about for approximately the last 50 years it seems like almost every major policy the US adopts increases the cost of manufacturing relative to a hypothetical entity that didn't do that. It has been a constant adjustment of labour law, environmental law, energy policy and financial regulation away from manufacturing. It is plain why US manufacturing isn't the global top dog. The real question is whether it is a bad outcome or not.

Over the last 50 years China has improved their energy use by 1 UK economy per capita. IMO we should also ask more seriously if those regulations were worth it. A UK per capita energy is a lot of QoL improvements and it was linked to doing a lot of manufacturing. The US on the other hand is behaving politically like people are worse off than they were.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#149

Post by jwagenet »

lkramer wrote: post #58

Why do I feel there is a parallel here to Boeing? (Maybe that was the motivation for the submission)

> Constant pressure to hit quarterly performance targets meant that machine quality often suffered. […] “the actions of these larger corporations and conglomerates, under the leadership of financial MBA’s, perhaps more than any other factor, contributed to the restructuring and decline of the US machine tool industry at the end of the 20th century.”

Probably the sentiment expressed by this excerpt. You can probably point to any example of former US expertise and make a similar statement.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#150

Post by FirmwareBurner »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #145
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>_Right now_, all of NATO combined can't even outproduce Russia alone. What? Don't know where you're getting your sources but NATO combined definitely can outproduce Russia. Why it isn't, is that Russia is in war mobilization mode with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort, while NATO's industry is still in peace-time mode because they're not under attack.

> with all their industry running 3 shifts for the war effort Lol? Where are you getting your sources?

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