Supermarkets have a steel aisle?
Costco maybe, but not my local Kroger.
Posted on 04/18/2007 3:07:01 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
How about titanium umbrella?
Almost like a Wok related injury.
Because it is a huge Ponzi scheme. Get foreign ‘investors’. Steal some of that money. Start making stuff on free Party land, with Party factory. Stiff the workers. Sell stuff. Keep money, and get it out of the country away from other greedy friends in the Party. Rinse, lather, repeat. In China, a few get rich, many die.
Yikes, lol. Time to ping the usual suspects!
Right. They cannot keep their ill-gotten money safely in China.
Trust me, it is.
I was buying Type 303 Stainless, and the supplier sent me this stuff full of sulfur stringers. It was rolled bar stock, bulged like pillows, and I had to clean the stock up so much before I could even start machining the parts that there was not enough metal left to hold dimensions.
The supplier got a two word note from me: "You're fired."
They took it back.
For other examples of the state of China's foundry art, visit a Wholesale Tool showroom. They certainly must have a multi-tiered industry, with the lowest one reserved for export, because no one could build a modern infrastructure with the stuff I have seen. "Make something that looks like a tool".
Years ago, I took a survey course in metallurgy and as part of the class they took us on a tour of a working steel mill. They told us in no uncertain terms, wear shoes with leather soles, no rubber or plastic. I didn't get to see a pour, but I remember seeing an ingot about 8 feet in diameter and about 40 feet long laying on the dirt floor. It was glowing red. It was a cold day, but even 50 feet away, it felt like the sun on a July afternoon.
A steel mill is a little piece of Hell on Earth.
Geez, what a crummy way to go...
I'm afraid the best stuff is reserved for export markets. You have no idea how shoddy Chinese stuff made for domestic consumption is. This is why a lot of Chinese prefer to buy foreign labels. The problem is that many of them don't know which labels are foreign. And foreign labels tend to try to hide their country of origin in order to cater to the nationalists who prefer to buy Chinese. (At the same time, it's only the stuff that's made in Chinese-owned factories in China that's a problem, foreign-owned firms generally have some standards).
That must be true of the domestic products, but China has a pretty robust economy and they could not possibly be building a modern navy or air force using the machine tools I see imported here.
After all, they have all the technology we have..(Never mind how they got it...)
Some people in industry have told me that the quality is there if you want to pay for it, but generally the stuff they sell to the retail market for home hobbyists is such junk that I was asked to leave an equpiment showroom when I told the proprietor I would not trade my fifty-year old South Bend lathe for the whole store.
In many instances, buyers have had to strip and rebuild new lathes before they could be made to work. If the ones made for the domestic market in China were worse, they would not work at all and there would be no point in building them. I suspect they have a special tier designed to attract foreign currency.
One thing they are doing right is in electronics products. I was buying a US made digital component. It was marked "Export Controlled" for years. Suddenly they were "Assembled in China".
I knew the company, having worked there years before, and said to them, "This will work well for you, until two years later the "Red Dragon Noodle and Electronics Company" down the street decides to make and sell them".
Guess what? Their product is now discontinued, and a similar product is selling on EBAY for 1/3 the price.
Somebody ought to send the article to rosie.
A steel mill is one of the most dangerous places to work that there is. Next to maybe the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
I worked at Ceco (sp?) Steel in Lemont, IL, back in the late 60’s. Came closer to being killed there than in Viet Nam or Beirut.
Semper Fi,
After all, they have all the technology we have..(Never mind how they got it...)
Chinese weaponry has a pretty junky reputation. The small arms are inferior to the Eastern European stuff, something any gun buff will tell you. The tanks, ships, and large systems are really abysmal. Southeast Asian customers who have purchased them, including Burma and Thailand, are unimpressed. Note that their latest fighter uses Russian engines. As to the airframes, who knows how long they'll last?
A big part of the problem is this tendency towards quick and dirty. It's like the old Jewish anecdote, where a cloth merchant's nephew complained about the thinness (and presumably fragility and low quality) of a sample - he replied: "never mind the thickness; feel the width". The whole ethos is quantity over quality.
The crappy stuff available in Chinese stores has to be seen to be believed. Among them - toilet flush mechanisms that rust, and fall to pieces after several months. Trust me - the export-quality stuff, while mostly abysmal where made by Chinese firms rather than foreign-owned firms, is better than what's sold domestically.
Supermarkets have a steel aisle?
Costco maybe, but not my local Kroger.
“but, but they said on TV that steel don’t melt by fire...”
The heat inside a foundry is far more intense than a fire from jet fuel.
“Great. Coming soon to a supermarket near you.”
WTF? I’m sure that must have made sense to you.
Yes, I have an SKS. My wife bought it for me as a joke.
The tanks, ships, and large systems are really abysmal. Southeast Asian customers who have purchased them, including Burma and Thailand, are unimpressed. Note that their latest fighter uses Russian engines. As to the airframes, who knows how long they'll last?
Maybe they will rust like that Foxbat did. Carbon steel vs. titanium, proves that if you put a big enough engine on an anvil, it will fly.
Liberals, too.....
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