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by firesteelrain6 hours ago |
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upvoteby SoftTalker5 hours ago|
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Most of it.
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upvoteby convolvatron2 hours ago|
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no one bothered to clone Sherline. Cheap mini mills and lathes that were the same cost, but were made out of actual castings and used more standard tools totally undercut Sherline.
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upvoteby firesteelrain2 hours ago|
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That’s my point
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upvoteby applfanboysbgon5 hours ago|
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Sad to see racist yellow scare bogeyman stuff going on at every little thing. You really think Sherline had some amazing hobby lathe IP that was just so far intellectually beyond what an educational powerhouse of a country with 1.6 billion people could ever come up with?
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upvoteby firesteelrain5 hours ago|
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Yes, I agree that China can copy Sherline’s IP and it’s a form of theft. An estimated 70-80% of the parts can probably be made in China. If you would like a breakdown I can provide it.

Sherline, for example, specifies spindle nose runout of 0.0005 inch or less and spindle end play around 0.0002 inch or less, using two 20-mm ball bearings with adjustable preload. That’s only about 13 µm runout. A Chinese factory can absolutely manufacture that.

Manufacturers such as SIEG took conventional lathe architecture and mass-produced it.

There is nothing original going on there lots of copying

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upvoteby mauvehaus1 hours ago|
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If you can quote spindle runout, you know perfectly well that there's no meaningful IP in this market segment. That would have been achievable by any number of manufacturers a hundred years ago.

It's a pure manufacturing cost play to make something precise enough, rigid enough, and light enough[0] while being inexpensive enough for the market segment it's aimed at.

Is it a bummer that a US manufacturer went out of business trying to make money at that play? Yes. Is there anything nefarious going on with IP theft? Absolutely not.

[0] This is being sold to customers who don't hire riggers to move their machines.

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upvoteby firesteelrain1 hours ago|
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how does a small US manufacturer compete when a foreign producer can duplicate 70–80% of the functional product at a fraction of the cost?
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upvoteby pessimizer1 hours ago|
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They can't. But how is that unfair? It's literally a choice we made.

And it's the one thing that unites every mainstream politician against Trump - they can't agree on tons of stuff, other than that we definitely should not be using tariffs to defend local manufacturers against Chinese (or any other) imports. I've been assured that those jobs are "not coming back." Well, big surprise - they're also not going to stop disappearing.

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upvoteby firesteelrain54 minutes ago|
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I agree some policy choices were made to get us in this situation. Biden largely left the first Trump era tariffs in place. The disagreements are on the broadness of them
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upvoteby lenkite4 hours ago|
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But isn't this completely fine ? The US became an industrial powerhouse by doing the same. Even barred foreign inventors from obtaining parents in the US. The U.S. Patent Act of 1793 was explicitly structured to favor domestic industrial growth at the expense of foreign inventors. Provided total legal immunity within the U.S. for commercializing pirated ideas. Only when the US became #1, did international protection of its patents became a priority.

China merely followed the American approach towards industrial success.

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upvoteby firesteelrain4 hours ago|
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I don’t think it’s completely fine to steal others technologies and products no. There are ways to be competitive and in an ethical manner
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upvoteby ahartmetz1 hours ago|
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The idea that ideas can be stolen and that doing so is wrong is fairly new and somewhat "unnatural". So the ethics of "stealing ideas" are not entirely well-defined. I think the only thing that almost everyone agrees on is that the person who had an idea first (or at least popularized it) should get recognition for it.
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upvoteby firesteelrain10 minutes ago|
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Huh? Patent systems go back hundreds of years! Yes nobody owns the idea of the lathe. We need to get past that. But for centuries, societies have recognized that someone who spends time and money developing a particular invention or manufacturing process can have legit rights to it
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upvoteby pessimizer1 hours ago|
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This isn't "clones/copying," but rather "Chinese people making things." It isn't like they're stealing our exclusive "lathe technology." They're just making lathes.

It's certainly destructive to local companies, but that's what tariffs are for. If you think we should be making lathes, then throw tariffs on countries that make them cheaper. If that just moves the pressure to a consumer who still can't afford local lathes, stop handing free money to stockholders and real estate owners and start handing it to people who buy things.

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upvoteby firesteelrain32 minutes ago|
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This is all a bit of a strawman. Lathe technology as a concept isn’t being disputed as stolen. Tariffs don’t fix the copying problem. My point is the country in general has a policy of copying and stealing
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upvoteby 1 hours ago|
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upvoteby contingencies4 hours ago|
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I also found the GP ridiculous. China probably made more lathes this year than the US has had in its entire history. You can get a complete lathe chuck assembly for 25 bucks. A small casting for maybe double that. I bet you could build a functional system for 100 or less at a quantity of one, including logistics. And if you knew what you were doing and had a mill, hand tools or a 3D printer to start with, within 3 days. They do not need to steal anything, they already are the world's most knowledgeable nation regarding machining fundamentals, supply chain, design tradeoffs, and maintenance. They have more trained machinists than anyone. The notion Sherline had any unique IP or that China needed to copy them is laughable.
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upvoteby YZF1 hours ago|
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I worked for a North American company that moved manufacturing of precision industrial equipment to China to reduce costs circa 2006.

There was a lot of knowledge transferred and training as part of that. For what its worth we previously had trained our North American partners. China could definitely not make our equipment themselves at that point in time. We did retain some key technologies but most of it was moved over.

I don't see how anyone can deny that the Chinese got a lot of the know-how as part of the mass transfer of production to China. 90% of their manufacturing know-how is from the west.

If the point is that Sherline specifically today doesn't have any IP they might care about- sure. It's been copied/reverse engineered/"stolen" a long time ago. I don't know when the Chinese entered the hobbyist machining market but when they did I'm sure copying existing designs wasn't exactly a barrier, or stealing trade secrets, or ignoring patents.

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