The Chinese Space station

[hounddoghowlie]

China really does have an active space program and has big plans for the near future thanks to their past economy and Walmart ...hahah

I wonder if it will be like all the chinese made stuff you buy at walmart. You got to buy a new one every six months cause the old one broke.

Don't let yourself be fooled. It's often ordered like that and engineered obsoleteness. China came a long way in the last twenty years. Quality is something you can steer. For example when you have molds for high pressure plastic extrusion, you wear them down faster when you use glass fiber for strengthening, what would keep it from breaking.

So what is done is they extrude with glass fiber and later when the mold starts to accumulate tolerances, they extrude the cheap non reinforced plastic through it for a cheaper version for mass market. $$$ factor.

I know that, can't sell new stuff if it lasts and affordable repair parts are available. Sad part, many U.S Mfg's started doing it sometime back.

I use to work and then owned a Industrial Commercial Electric Motor repair service, we repaired motors, generators, welders, powertools,Electirc Motor Starters, Commercial Restaurant Equipment. If it was electric and could get parts we'd work on it.

We use to joke about the difference between stuff made in the 40's 50's and 60's compared to stuff from the 70's and 80's on on. About how much more heavy duty the older stuff was than the new. But as time went on it got to where it wasn't a joke.

Here's just one example, gear boxes. most of the stuff that had one you could replace just the gear and it mate that was bad, then it got to the point you had to replace as assembly, then the whole gear box. Not only that the price of the part, plus cost of labor to do it made most people just scrap thingf and buy a new one.

We also rewound motor, and when we first started seeing chinese motors come in,  we would find what we thought was chinese news paper in the slots and between the coils for insulation, and on single phase motors the centrifugal spools for the start switches were held in place on the shaft with set screws instead of being pressed on like U.S. motor. They would wind up backing off and lett the spool move away from the switch and burn the start winding up.