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3K views 27 replies 13 participants last post by  kajunframer 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
As Powermatic owns Baileigh, (and of course Jet is part of the family) I was looking to see if there were any differences between their 3 HP cabinet saws, so I asked Baileigh TS.

" As we get them from the same manufacturer there are little differences" I guess that means they out-sourced them.
From the pictures, the 14 inch band saws from Oliver, Baileigh, and King look identical.
 
#2 ·
Geetech in Taiwan has been manufacturing a lot of major brands for years with some of that now being done in China. A bit of a tangled web but a lot of similarities with a lot of manufacturers. I'm pretty sure all the saws you mentioned could be Grizzly with a different paint job and some detail differences spec'ed out by the brand. Some of my equipment such as bandsaw, tablesaw, spindle sander, jointer, sold under the Canwood brand in Canada, is pretty much identical to stuff from Jet, General International, King, etc.
 
#6 ·
Take a look at this, Geetech even makes SawStop.

- Fred Hargis
Fred, thanks for posting that link.
Its interesting, I have seen other forum topics here covering this. Seems there are only a few Taiwan or China companies making just about all the major tools. And I have commented before about how they seem to all look alike with branded paint jobs as the major difference.
As far as made in China quality. Grizzly is a good example. I have a GO513X2 band saw. That same Grizzly saw comes in about 5 models with different prices as you go up in features. And pretty much looks just like the PM, Jet, and Laguna to name a few. My X2 is about middle of the road in price and features.
And you can go on Grizzly's web site and see just what is different on each saw. With the other Companies such as Powermatic, and laguna. They won't have the same saw offered with 5 price points, Maybe 2, and not as much info about what is in the tool they do offer.
I have wondered if Powermatic for example, (not trying to pick on PM) is worth the price. Other forums have pointed out that these tools are as good as the specs the brand has ordered from the manufacturing plants like Geetech. Does it have better components than the Jet, or Grizzly? How much of a price is the yellow brand paint?
I own a Jet 16X42 Lathe. And did not really know about Grizzly when I bought it. I think I would have been fine with a Grizzly lathe. Would have got more lathe and saved a bunch of money too.
 
#7 ·
Even if the same factory, there will be differences as they are made to a spec for each company. In bandsaws, there are clear differences between many of them, and not just the guides.

Though Taiwan is claimed by China, as far as manufacturing goes it is night and day. Taiwan has a somewhat honest Government with actual laws about fraud. They have a much longer manufacturing history. Where mainland CAN produce quality as well as anyone, it is there where they cut corners after the product is approved, cheaper bearings, sloppier machining. You can't go by looks. For decades all drill presses were made from the same 3 head castings. The difference was in machining and bearings. HUGE differences. My Delta looks identical to the one in HF, but at full extension, no play on the quill and my total measured runout is 2 thou. The HF might me better measured in inches.

Why do you think Grizzly is about 50% cheaper than Jet and half the price of PW? It is not just profit. Both design and tolerances are different. Don't get me wrong, I am not claiming any of this stuff was like the US built stuff of times past no matter who's sticker is on it. Delta claims to be in-sourcing as they can. I hope so before they go under for the crap they have been shipping. If their quality was not horrible and TS worse, I woudl have bought their drill press as the features were just right. I woudl like the new Unisaw, but am somewhat afraid.

Hmmm. In 2001 GeeTech, AKA CHIU TING, built a plant in mainland. So their Taiwan plant may be ISO 9000, it does not say their China plant is. Of course, ISO only verifies they have a process to build what they intend, so if they intend to build junk, and do build junk, they meet the certifications. Also curious, their agent for parts in the US is Oliver, who claims to still be family owned. I bet they have the N-L-A pulley for my Delta as it is the same on on half the drill presses out there including their 17 inch.

Not to be confused with GEEETECH.
 
#8 ·
IME - The biggest differences between brands made by same overseas mfg is quality of the sub components purchased by mfg.
Doesn't mean these sub parts are not made overseas, just means they set different minimum standards.

Powermatic requires Baldor branded motors , Westinghouse motor starters. Delta has similar requirements; no Chinese private branded motors (Baldor/Marathon), electronics, or bearings. Most US OEM require US, Japanese, S. Korea, branded bearings; which despite the company headquarters location, will usually come from plants in Taiwan.
Grizzly/Shopfox/Craftex/King/etc OEM save money by allowing the mfg to choose the lowest priced source, with some general requirements for reliability. Typically the min rel standards force the mfg to use above average quality parts, and not cheapest available when made in China.

Please note that Geetech is not only mfg the OEM's use. Which one they use depends on type of equipment. Geetech is famous for Saws, Planers, and Jointers. Roughly a dozen folks make band saws, and almost hundred folks make dust collectors. Lathe production is sort of a niche business with many folks involved too. Sourcing is a constant merry-go-round of who mfg, what, right now.

Really want to know the reason all these tools are same?
Simple: Competitive bidding.

When company wants to new tool model, they ask ALL the known mfg capable of meeting existing quality standards to quote on a drawing package.

There are literally no secrets in sub-contracting mfg of tools. Everyone of the overseas mfg knows what every mfg wants in a tool. If one overseas mfg offers a cost saving design change, the OEM pushes it out to everyone. Yes, each OEM has non-disclosure agreements in place, but all it does is delay the spread of information by a year or two. Doesn't help that employees in Taiwan will change companies for 10 cents more an hour, and they are all in same area. So the engineering staff inside the tool mfg have usually worked for the other guy(s) recently too.

The game played by actual overseas mfg is to tool up the mfg capacity to support making tools for anyone with minor modifications to machining, stamping/forming, or the color of furniture. Then they bid on projects to keep factory full, lowering prices as needed as long they make money.
When long established Geetech couldn't make money in Taiwan, they partnered/opened plant(s) in China. In some cases the entire machine is made in China, and others the major parts are made in China and shipped to Taiwan for assembly. Majority of low end Taiwan made tools use cast iron from China due lower costs. The name of game is leveraging investments to make money. Capitalism in it's finest form. :)

BTW - The entire tool mfg world was twisted violently with the USA tariffs last year. OEM had spent a ton of effort moving stuff from Taiwan to China last two decades, pushing China quality up to acceptable level. Taiwan mfg costs can be only 10-15% more than China with right design and sourcing plan. So when the China tariff hit, Taiwan suddenly become cheaper, and there has been wholesale effort to move mfg back to Taiwan. Harvey Industries in China had exclusive on Sawstop, until tariffs hit. The also used to be key mfg for Powermatic/Laguna lathes. If you look closely at latest PM/Laguna tools, the labels say made in Taiwan? Sawstop added Geetech China operation in last 3 years, primarily to produce the low end job/contractor saws with less margin, but I would not be surprised to see made in Taiwan labels on PCS? Geetech has one mfg plant dedicated to building bench top tools like lunch box planers, and are primary mfg for Dewalt planers. :-0)

Speaking of primary: Note that OEM never put all it's eggs in one basket. Typically large orders are split 80:20 or 70:30 between two sources. This serves three purposes. One to create higher capacity if demand exceeds plans. Two - offers a back up in case of calamity. Three - to lock in pricing competition. When demand is not large enough to be split; they will rotate order placement between mfgs to ensure they all are tooled and capable of meeting demand (when carp happens). Rotations tend to occur annually with model years, or model change overs. Now maybe all those confusing Jet/PM 6 digit stock numbers for same tool make sense? lol

FWIW - Spent 30 years in deep dark world for 'off shore sourcing' before retirement. It's a strange place. Have had the privilege of visiting several wood working tool mfg in my career, not for WW tools, but while I was hunting for quality machine tool builders for custom designed automated assembly equipment.
So not an expert and the above could have changed by time you read this. :)

Thanks for letting me share.

YMMV
 
#9 ·
If they claim to be 6 sigma and they are producing the garbage for Delta, they are telling more lies than POTUS.

From their quality page: Inspection, check, audit" Well that means they are doing AQL, not SPC. No wonder the quality consistency is so poor for so many brands. Does not make me want to drop $3800 on a SawStop. Being a former quality engineer, it is really frustrating as in it_ cheaper to do it right the first time.

Still looking at a Rikon band saw, but it has to be next year as until I get my Triumph on it's wheels, I can't unload one into my shop.
 
#11 ·
Rant mode on:

tvrgeek,
Sorry but IMHO you have obviously never done plant level quality certification for overseas mfg, or had to deal with how marketing folks sell quality. :-0)

Trying to dissect a mfg quality level from words on web site created by high school student is waste of time. All the ISO, sigma, AQL, SPC terms thrown out are for marketing purposes is meaningless without knowing the details. And you know what they saw about ass-umptions.

ISO certification just means they do exactly what the documentation shows. Not the documentation will produce a quality part. Can not count how many times my engineering teams forgot about CTE mismatch or tolerance stack ups, and tools didn't work when parts where on far end of design specification.

ISO quality is easy to understand:
Garbage in = Garbage out.
Quality in = Quality out
ISO certification is like a magic trick. Have to peal away the slight of hand to really know what is going on.

How do I know this?
Have been member of supplier audit teams for several employers. Have audited hundreds of companies. Then graduated to the one person ensuring my customers received quality parts as product line manager.

Pleas skip your cost of quality ranting.
Capitalism is all about creating the proper product balance to make money based on set of rules. Not everyone uses the same rules you think are required.
Example:
When the overseas mfg is not responsible for design reliability, and only liable for part reliability for x years; they don't care about end customers cost of quality. This situation always end up with a no-man's land where each person is blaming the other for stuff not working. Not to mention unhappy customers if problem is widespread or repeated. BTDTGTTS, hundreds of them.

Did you know that consumer tool OEM actually set pricing based on X% warranty claims? It is cheaper to pay for warranty parts and give free shipping to customers, than trying to fix quality systems for all the over seas mfg and component mfg they use? Fact of life, and all your ranting wont change how each business looks at quality.

IME - When a tool operation is not life or death, the cheapest way to reach acceptable quality is result.
Period.
Don't get me wrong. Automotive and Semiconductor folks have much different view on cost of quality than appliance or jigsaw mfg. High rel industries produce stuff that can have billions in liability with a simple mistake, and treat quality much differently forcing much higher levels of quality into entire supply chain.

Guess until you have lived on all sides of the 'cost of quality' equation,
you probably will never understand there is not one universal quality rule to rant about.

Hence,
Rant mode off:

Cheers!
 
#13 ·
"ISO certification just means they do exactly what the documentation shows. Not the documentation will produce a quality part. Can not count how many times my engineering teams forgot about CTE mismatch or tolerance stack ups, and tools didn't work when parts where on far end of design specification."

Seems to me I said that. Inspect and cull is still useless as we all know the first time the schedule gets tight, the culled parts go right back in the bin. Besdes, you spent time and money making bad parts and that makes JIT very hard to manage. A real pain with long lead time parts and doubly hard with low production numbers.

I only dealt with of-shore at the component level. We dealt with assembly locally. FWIW, I was on a team that won the Taguchi award so I have some background in identifying process issues. I will still protest, making a bad part and inspecting is more expensive than only making good parts. Converting from Crosby to Deming was the primary change that allowed us to emerge from Chapter 11. Happy customers and lower cost. Rework is too expensive. Of course, some scum bucket companies don't rework and just ship it to their customers. Maybe cheap today, but it catches up to you as your market share goes away. I pick on Grizzly as they keep coming up with documented cases of not caring about what they build like admitting a particular saw table was not flat. TS answer was "they all are, so no use sending a replacement" Sorry, they get what the deserve. I just got a WorkSharp. Love it, but had to modify it to maintain the skew when you changed bevel. Engineers response was " within tolerance" Well, 2mm slew difference on a 3/4 inch chisel between 30 and 25 degrees may be within his spec, but fails "suitability for use" . At least they admitted it. It was a tolerance build up between diecast warpage and paint thickness with a poorly designed adjustment that amplified the problem. So it saved me from returning it assuming it was a defect as a new one would be a crap shoot and could be just as bad. However I am suspicious of the top bearing, so it MAY still go back. Squeak is not a good sound for a bearing.

We also know as soon as the certification team leaves the floor steps get skipped, like knocking out all the sand from a casting, something Grizzly seems to have issues with, cleaning before painting, and swapping counterfeit parts. When the contracting company pulls their folks off the floor after a production starts, you can throw any semblance of process control out the window. Don't tell me the drive sheave in my Delta drill that was bored 45 thou crooked met the design spec. ( Pretty sure made by the above linked company) Make crap, ship crap, tell the customer to stuff it. Not how to stay in business. ( Delta, anyone home?) BTW, Delta, don't tell me the part is NLA when it is still in production for at least three brands from that same factory and BTW, what idiot put an A series belt on a 1 3/4 inch pulley. I'm a retired computer scientist and even I know better.

THere are a lot of ways to help engineers understand the variations of manufacturing. One way is to in-turn them on the floor. We found 6 months in the FA lab or product Engineering made far better engineers by the time they went to the design departments. Even a rotation through manufacturing or manufacturing test can really educate them as they don't teach " stuff happens" in school.

A friend worked for a hard rock mining company. All new employees, from VP to secretary spent their first two weeks underground on the face as a mucker. When they went to their office, they knew what business they were in. He told me that folks that made it through lunch the first day became long term employees. Very dedicated. Those who left at lunch the company did not want anyway.
 
#15 ·
If they claim to be 6 sigma and they are producing the garbage for Delta, they are telling more lies than POTUS.

- tvrgeek
First, please leave politics out of this!

Second, "6 sigma" only refers to how many products are allowed by the process (after all of the tolerance stack-ups) before the product does not meet overall specifications. "Sigma" has no control over the overall specifications, only how often they are met…
 
#16 ·
Very nice.

Please invest in a ZCI for your TS.

- Madmark2

How come not many use the "quote" feature so us dummies know who they re are addressing?

- AlaskaGuy
I can only speak for myself, but often the quoted passage is many paragraphs (just look at some of the replies above) and quoting them and then adding your add many paragraphs make a post that I presonally will pass on. Too, sometimes the reply is actually buried in the quote making it a little bit of work t figure out which part is the new reply. I'll sometimes use quotes, and then snip off the part I'm not replying to…but generally it seems quotes make an already overlong thread longer. But you raise a good point, it sometimes (often) hard to follow what's being said.
 
#17 ·
So you are saying Delta and others are SO incompetent that they specify machines that cost thousands of dollars and by specificion will not work? You are saying the unintentionally design a process where the paint falls off and leaves casting sand inside? They intentionally leave parts out of the box for some number of machines? HF initially accepted a design where the belt sheaves were not machined but were raw castings or bored 45 thou off axis? Yet the same contract supplier engineers design and build machines for other customers that work fine. I won't go that far.

Fact is a fact.

If they claim to be 6 sigma and they are producing the garbage for Delta, they are telling more lies than POTUS.

- tvrgeek

First, please leave politics out of this!

Second, "6 sigma" only refers to how many products are allowed by the process (after all of the tolerance stack-ups) before the product does not meet overall specifications. "Sigma" has no control over the overall specifications, only how often they are met…

- AndyJ1s
 
#19 ·
In a throwaway society of today is there really any positive pressure on the designers, manufacturers and distributors to produce the quality of yesteryear? With the income levels of some of the centennials it is not uncommon for them to buy a new car when ever it needs tires. (Example for sarcasm). I believe the company heads who control the product from conception to sales could, if it be their desire, make a product that matches the ad man's conception, even in a third world factory.
 
#21 ·
So you are saying Delta and others are SO incompetent that they specify machines that cost thousands of dollars and by specificion will not work? You are saying the unintentionally design a process where the paint falls off and leaves casting sand inside? They intentionally leave parts out of the box for some number of machines? HF initially accepted a design where the belt sheaves were not machined but were raw castings or bored 45 thou off axis? Yet the same contract supplier engineers design and build machines for other customers that work fine. I won t go that far.

Fact is a fact.

- tvrgeek
Unintentionally or carelessly, yes. Six sigma is a process for ensuring that a product meets its specifications. If there are no specifications on allowable paint flaws, bearing alignments/finish, etc. but the mfg meets all its customer's explicit specifications (within 6 sigma probability) then they can correctly and legally claim 6 sigma.

Note that a manufacturer's 6 sigma compliance does not include its suppliers, so bearings, seats, etc. that are not manufactured in that plant, don't necessarily count either.

In isolation, a claim of 6 sigma compliance is meaningless. And that is exactly how they are claiming it.

I spent the last half of my career designing electronics to 6 sigma for our customer's specifications.

Also, keep in mind that the packaging is rarely specified (unlike my customers'), so damage occurring during shipping does not go against their 6 sigma compliance. My customer specified shock and vibration environments for all kinds of potential shipping transport, including rail, using hump yards. It is pretty amazing what can happen on a rail car being classified in a hump yard!

I recently purchased a dust collector from Oneida, a US manufacturer. The shipment came in multiple boxes, but each box had a packing list, with a hand written identification of the person who packed that box, indicating that the proper contents were included. And everything was absolutely perfect! One box was damaged during shipping, but everything inside was present, and undamaged. The assembly instructions were clearly written by someone for whom English is their primary language.

Without accountability, quality suffers. There is very little accountability with most "lowest cost" suppliers.
 
#23 ·
Also note that any one OEM does not make all the tools for any given brand name and they may change time to time for the same tool every bid cycle.

I would be surprised if every motor used by an OEM is the same. I would think the motor was one of the things specified by the brand name. What brand is in a Grizzly 690 vs my C-300? Same basic saw, both made by Harvey.

"GW Industry … manufactured motors for Regal Beloit under the Leeson, Marathon, and Lincoln brands…
under brand "GW", "AG-I", and "SMC".

KO Ting Industry Ltd. WEB is old and does not display. They seem to be in Taiwan with a factory in Vietnam

I would be very surprised if the packaging design was not at least approved by the brand, even if designed by a third party.
 
#24 ·
I own a manufacturing-making items from powder metal, primarily for the auto industry (www.metaltech-pm.com). Captain Klutz is pretty much spot on. Parts we make, are built to the customer's specifications and our quality certification only says we will follow clearly stated policy and procedures to do so. When a part is brought on line, a rigid part approval process is undertaken with the customer and the customer then approves. If a gear is specified to break at "X" number of cycles, then that is supplied.

Do problem machines sneak through? Probably yes, but only because the importing company has specified less rigorous inspections.
 
#25 ·
Proper process control does not rely on EOL inspection. You monitor the drift in the process, not AQL.
Specifications outside the realm that can cause a failure is just plain bad engineering. Often driven by price. " Yes, we can make that price point but…"
Verified, both my Harvey tools are GW motors. My CV 1800 motor is branded Leeson, but seems probably GW.
Then there is Delta for whom there is no excuse whatsoever.

The problem with mostly Chinese plants, is they show up well for initial process verification as they CAN do as well as anyone. Then if the customer is not on-site, you get the bait and switch. Quality of the iron, different glue, improper prep before paint etc. This is why the successful companies like Apple have their folks in the OEM plant. Much easier with you domestic manufactures as one can just drop by. One of the actual cost advantages for domestic production. Powered metal is a really cool technology. :)
 
#26 ·
That is the reason why something made to a military spec will cost 20+ times more than the same thing made under a commercial spec. Even then the mil spec item has it's percent acceptance level. It costs a lot to make something and have it function as it was designed. A $300 hammer made for the Air Force is the same hammer you can buy at the hardware store, but the $300 one was carefully scrutinized and tested by an inspector. The more risk there is to personal safety (read insurance liability), the more inspection there will be, hence more costly. Imagine how much it costs to make a bolt or nut used on a space vehicle.
 
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