When did this happen? did you let them know the condition? That really sux. I am hoping that like all the developing countries, or the ones that have already developed (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) that started out with pert near krap, but kept going and started doing better work and better quality, Am hoping the same for India. I don't want to support China anymore, but I will for the foreseeable future--just looking for alternatives.
PS. I'm wondering if those dinosaur looking lathes they have in India are better than they look or as bad as they look.
It was a few years ago. Probably five maybe. I did let them know, but as has been my experience with India based vendors I didn’t get a very satisfactory response... in the end, I gave appropriate negative feedback... what more can you do short of returning the item.
Later, I spent six months living in India (Pune) investigating low cost tool manufacturing. I found some interesting things about how tools and machines are made there and my experience there was invaluable. But I will still go to China for “affordable” tools before I try India again. India manufacturing is still decades behind China. Even the best manufacturers in India can’t hope to compete quality wise.
The problem is that the market in India is not very demanding of quality. And so the many hundreds of tool manufacturers there don’t have to try very hard to compete.
I’ll give you an example. Two wheeler service garages in India buy cheap tools to service scooters and bikes. But they go through a few of these tools each year, because the heat treatment if there at all is cr@p and the tools just wear out. I was meeting with a service manager and he was complaining about a particular tool. I asked him what it cost and he said 200 rupees (all tools cost 200 rupees). That’s about 3 USD. I said to him, so you pay 1000 - 1200 rupees a year for this tool. Would you be prepared to pay 1000 rupees for a tool that lasted two years? He said yes, but his manager would never let him. The market says, a tool costs 200 rupees. I did some searching. Every vendor has the 200 rupee tool. But a 1000 rupee high quality tool is just not available in India no matter how hard you look.
I suspect that heat treatment will be the killer for any Indian made machine tool. At this stage, I would not be buying a machine tool made there.
Maybe you have philosophical reasons for not wanting to go to China for tools or machines, but I have friends and business colleagues there and over the years have developed good relationships with them. I’ll continue to support those individual firms.
Cheers,
Hugh
.
