The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#71

Post by hwillis » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:40 PM UTC

jackyinger wrote: post #8

jackyinger wrote: post #4

How’s basing the US economy on services looking now? My brother is an extremely skilled machinist, the sort who could build machine tools if he had the resources. And let me tell you there ain’t many of them, especially not young ones. Why? Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. That’s how you end up with a manufacturing industry full…

And this isn’t going to change overnight. You know what I’m talking about. Most of the good machinist knowledge in America has retired, if not already literally died. And mechanical engineers in the US largely don’t have the hands on skill to really understand making these machines. Not that that can’t gain it. But to achieve truly high precision (the pinnacle from which all other percussion is derived) is an extreme…

> The state of the art (and has been for eons) is hand scraping

No, it absolutely is not. Optics machine tools make things flat and accurate within a few atoms. Cheap surface plates are more precise than any human could hope to achieve by hand.

Hand scraping is remarkable- skill can get you ~micron cutting depth. It would be totally obsolete except that the rough crosshatch pattern it creates is useful for retaining oil. Modern tools, especially the most precise tools, are not hand scraped. Cheap clone knee mills are hand scraped. Single-point diamond cutters run on air bearings with no oil, because the oil gap in plain ways is too large.

Hand scraping is thoroughly limited by the viscosity of the marking fluid. You identify high spots by painting a flat blue and rubbing it on another flat part. If the whole surface rubs off then you can't tell where to scrape. The fluid does not spread out in single atom thickness.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#72

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #59

whatshisface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the step where you ignore intellectual property law so that it becomes temporarily legal to start companies without a "war chest" of patents to ward off disputes with.

I mean, patents only apply in the nation where they're granted. So "ignoring" IP is just a matter of refusing to recognize foreign patents, which is something that all nations do implicitly. Also, in most foreign countries, court cases are cheap. (They could literally be 100x cheaper to litigate than they would be in the US.) If you're talking about in a US context specifically, then if absolutely necessary the feder…

>So "ignoring" IP is just a matter of refusing to recognize foreign patents, which is something that all nations do implicitly.

That's not true at all. US companies register patents in all foreign jurisdictions as well. It wasn't legal for Chinese companies to copy all that US IP, they were just able to do it because to stop them, our diplomats would have basically had to persuade the Chinese government not to develop.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#73

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #65

pjc50 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no "legal", "orderly" retreat from the current situation IMHO. It's going to be messy. .. so what's the point of this again?

What's the point of what?

The "retreat" (in which direction) from the "current situation" (US richest country in the world, as they keep reminding us "Europoors"). What's the US supposed to look like after this purge?

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#74

Post by walterbell » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #57

walterbell wrote: post #12

Andy Grove, "How to Make an American Job" (2010), https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/adm/loeb/11_35... The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the…

> make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations As always, it comes back to the solution which pays executives and shareholders from taxpayer and consumer money. That's the system which gave America Boeing: too big to fail.

> pays executives and shareholders from taxpayer

Maybe 2010-2024, but 2025 has seen CHIPS Act deprioritized in favor of foreign (e.g. TSMC $100B) investment in US manufacturing.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#75

Post by Teever » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:44 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #22

ryandrake wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. If I could make as a machinist what I make as a software monkey, all other things being equal, I'd go back in time and train to be a machinist. People will go where the money is.

The only way to "solve" this is to reduce US output of valuable goods so that people are attracted to jobs that pay less and make less valuable goods. I don't understand why everyone's so enamored with the prospect of making $50k working a lathe in a world where engineering jobs have been made rarer artificially. It won't even be a job in a factory that makes something cool like rockets or lithography machines, witho…

I don't understand why everyone on HN is so enamored with beautiful looking Apple hardware but doesn't understand that this stuff is made by people and machines that are also made by people.

At the end of the day if you want quality products and innovation you need to pay for it.

Outsourcing this ability to other countries saves you money up front but it costs you the institutional knowledge to do it at home and all the costs that losing this entails.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#76

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:44 PM UTC

yojo wrote: post #33

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been coasting on advances made many decades ago. Most developed, sure. Successful? By nearly any metric you can imagine or make up. Strongest? Our economy is eaten hollow by termites. A stiff wind would make it crumble. Worse, there doesn't appear to be any path to true recovery... we can't create the jobs that people need to prosper, but if we could somehow do that we no longer create the people who would grow…

Tech is the obvious one, but there are lots of less obvious ones, like designing the things that are manufactured elsewhere. It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services). If we keep tariffs high enough for long enough, we will bring back manufacturing job…

>It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services).

I know, right? When you go home and sit down on your Oracle database to relax, then go to the kitchen to cook your evening meal in an AWS Lambda, then afterwards relax a little more by changing into some spreadsheets, it really puts it into perspective: everything a person needs is technology and software, and who wouldn't want to dominate that industrial sector?

>If we keep tariffs high enough for long enough, we will bring back manufacturing jobs.

Sure, but we don't have a commitment from Trump's eventual successors that they will continue, let alone from the opposition party. In other words, everyone knows that it will not continue long enough... the only real question is how do they best mitigate the pain while it does continue short-term? Trump could easily drop dead of a stroke or heart attack tomorrow, he is not a young man or in great health. But even should he survive the full term, the clock's already ticking. Why would anyone commit to an expensive long term investment today, when January of 2029 it will no longer be necessary?

>They will not be high paying unless unions artificially constrain labor supply.

The labor supply is already constrained... demographic implosion is well underway. The only way to unconstrain it would be to import millions of people from foreign countries.

>If we want to withdraw from the world economy we mostly can,

Why would this be withdrawing? Who do you think we'd want to sell the products to anyway? No, I believe we're talking about switching our role from consumer in the global economy to producer. What do you think the Chinese could even buy with all the trade deficit cash they're squirreling away, when we don't make anything? Some large chunk of it is buying up stock, real estate, etc. Give them something else to buy.

>but don’t expect to have as nice of a life afterward.

I'm like a 8th class (or lower still) software engineer in a fly-over city, and even my salary's six figure. The rest of you I always figured were doing better still. So I can understand why you don't get that for most people in the United States, "nice of a life" hasn't been a thing for generations, it's mostly stories they tell each other that have been repeated since the 1960s that originated with their great-grandparents. I mean, I would've thought some of that leaked through reddit and other such forums, where they complain about working 3 Uber-Eats-style jobs and never having a day off, only to be able to scrape by in some shit apartment while wondering how to keep their crappy used car from being repossessed.

You swim in this little bubble of atypicality, never noticing that the cheap clothes on the Walmart shelf show up from the distribution center looking what we would've called threadbare just 30 years ago. That no one you know (even those earning like you do) owns real furniture even if they earn a salary like yours. Even the "fancy" McMansions that you see from time to time are garbage, constructed as if no one cares that they last longer than 20 years. How many of the consumer goods in your home can you lay hands on that aren't 50% plastic or more?

Nice of a life. Haha.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#77

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #73

markus_zhang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of what?

The "retreat" (in which direction) from the "current situation" (US richest country in the world, as they keep reminding us "Europoors"). What's the US supposed to look like after this purge?

(just a disclaimer that I do not agree or disagree with this bringing back manufacturing to the US, the discussion is solely based on the supposition that Trump wants to bring it back)

Once the purge is done in the public and private sectors (yeah you can imagine that such interest groups exist everywhere), Trump and his allies need to install competitive people to create and execute policies to "bring manufacturing back".

Failing either of the two (purging and reinstalling competitive policy makers) fails the job.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#78

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #19

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How’s basing the US economy on services looking now? You mean the worlds strongest, most developed and most successful economy?

We've been coasting on advances made many decades ago. Most developed, sure. Successful? By nearly any metric you can imagine or make up. Strongest? Our economy is eaten hollow by termites. A stiff wind would make it crumble. Worse, there doesn't appear to be any path to true recovery... we can't create the jobs that people need to prosper, but if we could somehow do that we no longer create the people who would grow…

> Do we build boats or planes or cars? Do we make computer chips or garments or appliances?

I mean .. obviously yes? It's just that you don't make all the chips and cars on the planet. Or even all the locally used ones.

The US is mostly an astonishingly wealthy country that has somehow convinced itself that it's in the middle of a decline, while simultaneously avoiding facing up to any of the QoL questions which people routinely fight over on HN where the US average or poorer citizen might actually be worse off.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#79

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #51

morkalork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crushing unions is partly to blame here. I've got relatives whose families have been working in the mining industry for a few generations. They all lament the good old days that are long gone now.

how would increasing the cost of labor mean that we have more manufacturing jobs in the US today?

There are a lot of manufacturing jobs. In fact, the "Manufacturing" category is four times larger (12M vs 4M) in terms of employment than "Information." The primary interests of people working in manufacturing are higher pay and better working conditions.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=50&eid=4881#s...

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#80

Post by hwillis » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:46 PM UTC

letitbeirie wrote: post #62

hwillis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My brother is an extremely skilled machinist, the sort who could build machine tools if he had the resources. Machine tools are not designed by extremely skilled machinists, they are designed by engineers. Machinists do not know how frames deflect or resonant modes or overconstraint or the other things that are critical in machine tool design. Machine tools are inherently dynamic systems where moving cutters cause…

> Machine tools are not designed by extremely skilled machinists But they're built by extremely skilled machinists. I've practiced engineering for decades but I wouldn't even want to be in the same room as any object I've personally made being spun up the first time.

Not really. Mostly they are built by machines. Extremely skilled machinists work in research or niche development, where they can solve new problems. Very skilled operators can tram a machine better, or eke out more repeatable clamping, and make slightly more accuracy out of an established process.

Their time is much better spent creating new processes or making low-run jigs and things.