Shaper in China

Thought I'd post up some pictures of a Shaper I saw last week in China. Made in 1983, so an antique. In India now and seeing lots of lister engines, but no machine tools yet.

Gregory, Where was that?

Here is another shaper in China- says ALBA. In a museum and in true curator tradition for machine tools, mislabeled. Exact, location unknown. Was some Museum in Bejing. I was not there, just got the pic. Thanks to diligence efforts of Mao, not much old iron remains.

I actually found a shaper in India today. (Note, I'm not looking for these, just seeing them in the factories I am in)

i myself saw very large quantities of old machine tools in China. They had huge used machine tool stores with over head cranes. Hundreds (if not thousands) of lathes,mills, grinders, edm side by side difficult to walk between. You would pick your machine and it would be put on a truck. I also saw machines abandoned in old factories and in unheated high humidity areas and they quickly became in bad shape. They also had stores selling new machines of course.
.
Basically in any big city you asked the taxi driver to take you the the area with the most tools stores and machine shops. it was almost a zoning thing. you would go to an area like in Shanghai and there would be hundreds of stores in the same mile of road. this made it easier for people on foot to walk from store to store. I saw many small shops that we called garage door shop. basically they opened the garage door everyday so customers would see what they do or the machines that they had. it was not unusual to see a wire edm cutting 4" thick steel within 20 feet of the sidewalk.
........ basically i got the impression very little maintenance was normally done. the preference was to buy the newest and latest machines rather than have to work with old machines.of course if you had little money you would be forced to use old used machines. i believe it also was not unusual to lease machines rather than buy. that way somebody could setup a rented shop with leased equipment

That is very interesting Tom. Back in the day, way back, I wish I was good with dates, lets say 1860-1870's Putnam Machine Company filled a big contract selling machinery to China. It made the local papers and got into some of the history books. I am not about to go looking (in china), but; it would be amazing if that stuff survived. these would be from the fancy ornate time period and must have been some pretty substantial sizes.

Now I hear a lot and you say one thing, but on good authority I know Mao was nuts about scrap drives. It could be the old stuff you speak of today, was in use during his time. Either way, I still hope that old Putnam machinery could have survived in some working capacity and escaped the wrath of Mao.

When i got my shaper picture, i was just so totally disappointed. For a Museum! A motor drive shaper. And they called it a planer, so; naturally I expected a picture of a planer. (By you know who)

This is a shaper thread, so I contributed my 6c (inflation adjusted) FWIW.

in China I saw mostly Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, Tiawanese, Swiss, British, American machines. Most machine I saw controls were in Chinese. I am talking around year 2000. They had vast large quantities of shops making plastic injection molds. it was not unusual to see a plastic injection molding machine in a old barn under a 100 watt bulb being run a 1 person filling burlap bags. Now the trend is to much larger factories with many machines making stuff like ball point pens and markers. Many modern factories have thousands of workers.
....... you would have to get a copy of the Shiyong Wujin Shouce book (standard hardware handbook) which is like a universal catalog of hardware store items to get a better ideal what is common. it is my belief they bought more machines from British (Hong Kong), Russia (USSR), Japan, Tiawan, Germany (East Germany), Swiss. I got the feeling German, Swiss, Japanese machines get the most admiration and respect for.
......... i suggest you read up on
Deng Xiaoping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
....... many consider him the father of modern China. Much has changed since the time of Mao.

My limited interest in things Asian & Old would all predate Mao. I was watching an international news broadcast, streaming TV, on the computer last night. They covered an auto show in Hong Kong. Showing off some beautiful models from Korea and I do no refer to the cars But that is sure not old. Interesting but not old. I can dig the Last Samurai and Crouching Tiger stuff too.

DMF_TomB said:

i myself saw very large quantities of old machine tools in China. They had huge used machine tool stores with over head cranes. Hundreds (if not thousands) of lathes,mills, grinders, edm side by side difficult to walk between. You would pick your machine and it would be put on a truck. I also saw machines abandoned in old factories and in unheated high humidity areas and they quickly became in bad shape. They also had stores selling new machines of course.
.
Basically in any big city you asked the taxi driver to take you the the area with the most tools stores and machine shops. it was almost a zoning thing. you would go to an area like in Shanghai and there would be hundreds of stores in the same mile of road. this made it easier for people on foot to walk from store to store. I saw many small shops that we called garage door shop. basically they opened the garage door everyday so customers would see what they do or the machines that they had. it was not unusual to see a wire edm cutting 4" thick steel within 20 feet of the sidewalk.

Click to expand...

Anyone have pictures of something like this. About the only thing close to this I know of here in the USA is Machinery Values. It would be neat to see some photos.

China Used Machine Store Pictures

China Used Machine Store Pictures
.
in big Chinese cities I find telephone book of limited use as the telephone book does not say how big a store is. Asking taxi drivers I find is the faster way to go.

more pictures

more China used machine store pictures

store selling new machines in China

store selling new machines in China
.
this is around 2002, every time i was there i usually saw bigger and bigger stores. some selling precision tools were getting close to the size of a Home Depot or Lowes store. most stores were smaller many were a group of different vendors in the same building.

i went to a Chinese factory once making Sea Container cargo ships that were 7 stories tall holding 1024 sea containers the size of tractor trailers. The factory of course was massive. They had more metal in the scrap luggers than my American company of 30,000 employees used in a whole year. Basically some factories over there are 10x or bigger than any other factories from around the world.
.
Not many places where in a few miles of streets you can find everything you need to setup a factory including plastic injection molding machines side by side like in a used car auto lot.

Nice pics thank you Tom (likes clicked). There is a view of china Ive never seen. It bring back memories of the days when we had 3 big machinery dealers in Worcester. You know, it is not that things have changed, merely that they have moved. One difference, The Worcester guys all had some 100 year old stuff in the back areas. In some cases they were in business over 100 years and/or purchased big lots, never threw anything away. What is missing in these photos are the century old machinery.

The first post mention 1983, antique not sure why, have you seen anything oh say .... 1883?

peter said:

Nice pics thank you Tom (likes clicked). There is a view of china Ive never seen. It bring back memories of the days when we had 3 big machinery dealers in Worcester. You know, it is not that things have changed, merely that they have moved. One difference, The Worcester guys all had some 100 year old stuff in the back areas. In some cases they were in business over 100 years and/or purchased big lots, never threw anything away. What is missing in these photos are the century old machinery.

The first post mention 1983, antique not sure why, have you seen anything oh say .... 1883?

Click to expand...

.
no i saw stuff between 0-50 year old machines. you are probably correct in that 50-150 year old machines in China were sent to the scrap yard to be recycled. They had places rewinding motors and fixing machines but most stuff being repaired did not look that old.
..... the east coast of China tends to be warm and humid so things rust. also i have heard of laws where cars over a certain age were to be no driven any more. this is for air pollution or to encourage new car sales i am not sure. also some factory equipment over a certain age was to be no longer used to encourage newer more efficient machines in factories maybe and again maybe equipment that pollutes less.

I dont think there were many machine tools in China 100 years ago. It was a poor, agricultural country, almost all the industrialization has taken place in the last 30 or 40 years.
Its true Mao encouraged scrap drives- he felt that industry was the mark of an advanced country, so he encouraged building factories, but as a PR move, he was really big into making Iron- and he had a big program in the late 50's and early 60's where people were supposed to make iron in their back yards. But these were tiny, wood fired cupolas that mostly made pig iron- and they were mostly recycling things like frying pans and old car parts.
I dont think there was any significant amount of vintage machinery to recycle.

They still make shapers in both India and China. You can buy brand new ones.
Shaping Planning Planomiller - Shaping Machine
BH6070 shaping machinery, View Shaping machine, Product Details from Shenzhen Richon Industry Co., Ltd. on Alibaba.com

Hey chaps. I made it home today, got super sick the last day in India and had to go on antibiotics, even being careful with what I ate. So between travel and being sick I did not check the post.

Anyways - great pictures Tom. I'll have to go looking for the machine tool sector next time I'm in Shanghai.

The factories that I was in are owned by the fortune 50 company that I work for - but the shops are more for general maitenance than tooling production. Quite franky my home shop is better tooled than these ones.