Chinese machines???

How the heck is China leading the world in manufacturing when they make absolutely rubbish machinery (and I'm holding back on the epithets for rubbish)

I suppose I know the answer - cost. But this is the third time in 2 years I have been called to install/commission a new machine from China that I could hardly believe how bad the quality of workmanship was.

This was a 'roller shutter door' making machine.
A huge (2 ton) coil of flat steel is uncoiled through a perforating stamping press, then through forming rollers and then to a length cutting machine and stacker.

It had a Mitsubishi plc and an HMI ( I don't know the make of HMI as it was all in Chinese) and a few Siemens inverters. I can't say for sure but something just didn't look right with those components - the printing on them was not straight and looked like they had been put on with transfer paper. Almost certainly fakes.

The HMI made me laugh. It was a big colour touch screen 12'X12' (maybe bigger) with only 1 page (everything crammed onto the 1 page) with a nice picture of pagodas as a background?? And you had to hold your finger on any button for about 3 seconds before it would respond.

There was only 1 emergency stop and that was on the main panel with no safety relay and they must be short of wire in China as the links between buttons etc were so tight you could play a middle C on them.

There was a box of 'stuff' (it said 'stuff' on the box) full of electrical parts (limit switches, photocells etc that said 'fit to machine when installed' with no further instructions. Just a row of unused terminals in the panel with Chinese letters on them.

As is our job - I slowly worked out where each switch should go and what terminals to connect to. (with absolutely no documentation)
Then we came to the first switch on.

I tentatively pressed start with my hand over the stop button and 2 hydraulic motors started with a very bad noise, did I hit that stop button fast.

Two hydraulic oil tanks had no oil in them. I had to go buy 8 25L (5 imperial gallon) barrels of hydraulic oil. It nearly broke my back filling the tanks. We don't sweat much us sparkies but it was dripping off me by the end.

They loaded a 2 ton coil of steel on to the 'uncoiler/feeder and it was tipping over until they pushed it right on with a fork lift. Then they pressed the hydraulic grippers and there was a very loud mechanical bang from inside.

Four huge bolts had to be unscrewed to get the side panel off (All were made from mild steel and rusting already) to see what had happened.
All four bolts were cross threaded and skew whiff (lol) and the bolt-holes in the thick steel panel had been cut out with an acetylene torch. They had to use a monkey wrench to unscrew the bolts as the edges quickly 'rounded'

A weld had broken inside under pressure - I say a weld, a load of molten metal without the slag being knocked off. (bird s41t welding as it is called here) and the connecting (rusting) steel rods had all twisted.

So that part is useless until they get a welder/engineer to replace everything.

So next the stamping press (it perforates the steel to make the shutters see through) A huge flywheel with no guards whatsoever struggled and buzzed to get to speed. It worked when they tried a test piece but what a noise - well above any acceptable decibel level.

The list of unbelievable things goes on; the test pieces got stuck in the forming machine every-time because the rollers were out of line; the measuring device (for piece length) was an encoder with a roller laid on the formed metal and it slipped - not to mention the overrun when length was reached.
And as a finale, when the hydraulic cutters actuated, the hydraulic pipe came off at the crimp squirting a jet of oil across the factory.

It's left like that at the moment until they get some engineers to repair everything....... this is a brand new machine from China.

Oh, I lied, there was documentation. In a brown envelope that came with the machine was an 8GB mini memory chip taped to the inside.
On that chip there was just one file - a video file of the machine working taken from someones phone with a Chinese commentary. (it wasn't discovered until all the above had already happened) and even if I spoke chinese I wouldn't have known what to do as most of it was drowned out by the noise of the press.

Do they import Chinese machines in the USA?

Does the machine have an EC Declaration of Conformity ?
Does it have a Instruction for Use, with detailed information how to operate the machine safely, and how to put it in zero energy state before maintenance ?
Does the machine seem to be designed with safety in mind, with no blatantly unsafe areas of operation ?
If not all of the above is OK, I would flat out refuse to touch the machine.

What do you think Jesper - from my description?

I have told them of all the safety issues - and what still needs to be done to bring it up to standard. I'm going back when they have fixed a few things and we#ll see where we go from there.

Can you convince your management that the machine is so bad?

I feel for you Ronnie.

its one of those "pop around" jobs, "we are so excited about our new machine, can you come over and just get it going?"

You take one look, hold you head in your hands and sigh. Then you make the mistake of trying to be helpful and become the "Bad Guy" by telling them how much they have got to spend on their brand new machine to get it working and to stop the HSE from ramming their door down with a prohibition notice.

Good luck

Will there be a take-over certificate ? There should a document where the supplier states that the machine is safe and can be operated by the end-customer. If not, and if there is an accident the supplier can claim that they are not to blame, since you were not supposed to operate the machine yet.
As an operator of the machine you are responsible for that the machine is safe, and you do that by holding the supplier to the contract including safety aspects. As I see it, if the machine is so bad as you describe, it should have been turned back to the supplier, or they should have come onsite to do the complete installation PLUS they should have provided the instructions for use.
It is highly problematic that you take the machine into operation without documentation from the supplier. Seriously, you (you and your company, both) can get into serious trouble !
I am afraid that you have unvittingly taken over the complete responsibility. That means you may have to start all over with risc assessment and documenting the achieved s Performance Level.

I have one customer that bought a knock-off copy of a machine they had that got ruined by chemical fumes from a nearby process. I went over the spec's for them and told them to require a copy of the program with all items described and all lines or sections commented. The copy they were sent had a total of 5 line comments (all in Chinese) and not one item described. The contacted the maker and they responded with an Excel file (all in Chinese)

The only benefit will be that the maker is sending 2 technicians over to setup and commission the machine.

Machines needs to have a CE mark and fulfill safety requirements to be used in the EU. It's mandatory.

If you import a non-CE machine and intend to use it (which you can) you have to certify it yourself. If you resell it you also have to certify it's conformity to regulations and the importer will be the manufacturer when it comes to liability.

I don't put the blame on the Chinese one bit. It's the one who bought the machine who was stupid. The Chinese just made a machine with the quality the buyer was paying for. I'm sure there is a Chinese company that could have built a much better one for five times the price.

Also new machines in the EU needs to conform to ISO 13849-1 which is the safety requirements for safety PLC, safety relays etc.

If the electrical components do not have a CE stamp everything needs to be replaced. It's a prerequisite for the EMC directive.
Many have found that importing something which are not up to regulations becomes very, very expensive.

They make **** machine and state-of-art machine too.

Buyer's choice.

Pete.S. said:

I don't put the blame on the Chinese one bit. It's the one who bought the machine who was stupid. The Chinese just made a machine with the quality the buyer was paying for. I'm sure there is a Chinese company that could have built a much better one for five times the price.

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+1

It is short sighted and dangerous (from a competition standpoint) to think that all Chinese machinery is like this one.

While it is true that some US and EU companies make junk, and some Chinese companies make quality, you don't have to be a Las Vegas bookmaker to figure the odds on each.

As Daddy always told me, "You get what you pay for, or less."

ndzied1 said:

It is short sighted and dangerous (from a competition standpoint) to think that all Chinese machinery is like this one.

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Not all but I have been to China 5 times now trying to sell motion controllers. The Chinese want cheap as if nothing else matters. We have found a few exceptions but only after all the others have failed will they spend the money to buy ours.

I once was in China to see a customer. I thought I would be able to tune the system up for him but the system had sooooo many problems. What they called a servo valve would not move even after a second of applied voltage. My time was wasted due to poor equipment and design.

On the Chinese hydraulic forum there is a recent thread where they are trying to synchronize 2 hydraulic cylinders use 4WRZ valves. ( Norm knows what they are ). These don't have spool feed back and are no where close to linear. The 4WRZ valves are cheap. The purchasing agent doesn't care how much time the engineer wastes making an inferior product.

Now we do have one Chinese customer that pays close attention to what we say. They can synchronize a 4 corner press with unequal loads on the actuators to 10 microns. That is very good as good as what we can do over here.

Most of the Chinese engineers have not got beyond using the P gain only on their closed loop control.

Peter Nachtwey said:

Most of the Chinese engineers have not got beyond using the P gain only on their closed loop control.

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I've only ever used P gain on closed loop positioning control ... so far so good! although the next project has a valve rated for 15 m^3/s water flow at 100m head that has to open to 48.5% stroke in 2.5s and then opens at 1.6%/s after that. I'll find out soon if P gain is not good enough.

We have worked on a few Chinese-brand hydro electric turbine generators between 1 and 2.5 MW. The customer saves some money up front but the machines are always less efficient than big name brands so they probably lose in the long run. The documentation is usually garbage initially and this makes the engineering process difficult and increases our time & costs.

Generally any big important large metal bits like the turbine and generator have been OK but anything small and finicky or auxiliary systems from Chinese subs have been garbage. Fake breakers and instruments, pipes and fittings that never had a hope of not leaking all get installed and then go straight in to the garbage when it becomes clear that's what they are. Bearings on a brand new machine fling oil all over the wall.

Several Turbine vendors are manufacturing in China though and the turbines are top notch; the French company Andritz and the Norwegian company Rainpower come to mind.

What is wrong with taking advantage of some plant managers arrogance and stupidity. He overrode his engineers advice and decided that he could get it cheaper and he did.
Over the last 50 years I have seen American companies build "pie in the sky" machines. They would get their progress payments less the last 10 percent and the company would get exactly what they deserved.
I had a list of companies that I didn't return their calls for help. It is a no win situation for the guy that has to get it running.

It's probably too far gone now its been 'amended'

I would of been onto the importer too (if not the factory itself') about the DoC to show it conforms.

If there is no importer and it was bought direct, then the factory becomes the importer and has to issue the CE mark and issue the DoC.

Sadly its not up to the manufacturer in this instance. From the sounds of it you are no-where near that standard.

Additionally, suppliers / installers are to make 'reasonable checks' of new products looking for defects. If you found defects and carried on anyway, that is not a good position to be caught in.

On top of that the machine will also come under PUWER for the employer which opens up a new can of worms as the onus is on them.

Sounds like it should of been rejected at the first 'reasonable check' after delivery, but probably too late now.

If you get it going and it works for the next 20 years then great, nice job.

If it slices someones arm off, I wouldn't want to be you or the factory to be quite frank, when HSE come knocking.

Cheap doesn't mean good value.