A worrying trend for the future

[GOLDSTAR]

cannot help with engineering suppliers but as an aside I'm have just read that Les Emery of Norvil has purchased drawings for AMC machines from Andrews Engineering, although these may only be the Norton engine bikes. kind regards

[Rangy65]

Thanks Goldstar - We are currently having conversations with Les around parts.

Cheers
Steve

[Rob Harknett]

In this, my fifth and final career, I work in the FE sector. My College "merged" with another training provider with a wide range of kit used to train young people directly and on behalf of companies such as GSK, Hitachi and others.

The subsidiary training provider has lathes, milling machines, shapers and all the old kit as well as CNC/CAD and 3D printers.

FE Colleges and Universities (Teesside being a leading example in the engineering and development front) are keen to provide students with the "real world" challenges. Although they may not get into batch production, they may, perhaps, be prepared to investigate material, produce acceptable modern drawings and do some testing work. One of our Board of Governors is Production Manager for NIFCO which supplies to the car industry for example.

Could this be worth a go? Like Birmingham, Teesside is still proud of and continues to train for it's industrial manufacturers.

I'd be happy to give it a go.
A lot of drawings have been made of the type you refer to. I could try and get them. Many will be CNC CAD 3D drawings. But I am having problems getting across that, these are the type of drawings now needed. I suggested 2 years ago I should try and get these drawings that amounted to about 4GB of files, but failed to get the OK to try and get them. Perhaps because I referred to them as 3D auto cad. Or 80% of drawings were for prewar parts. I also brought 3D auto CAD software, thinking I may need it. Having failed to get the OK to try and get the drawings, I got a refund on the software. It was a bit beyond me, but I had an architect pal that would have helped me, in return if I let him also use the software, so he could do some private work for himself. I will not be buying the software again, as my pal has now moved away, and not be able to teach me.


Johnny B

[alanengineer]

I think care needs to be taken on this. We could end up with 100s of individual suppliers. A nightmare for the accounts team.

There are several grades of bronze, so as an opener, what grade is specified for the timing side crankshaft bush for a single?Full bars of that stuff can be £100s.

Alan

[Rob Harknett]

I think care needs to be taken on this. We could end up with 100s of individual suppliers. A nightmare for the accounts team.

There are several grades of bronze, so as an opener, what grade is specified for the timing side crankshaft bush for a single?Full bars of that stuff can be £100s.

Alan

More the problem. We get parts made, supplier keeps tooling and drawing's we have paid for, from which to make more parts to sell and undercut us

[ajscomboman]

I think care needs to be taken on this. We could end up with 100s of individual suppliers. A nightmare for the accounts team.

There are several grades of bronze, so as an opener, what grade is specified for the timing side crankshaft bush for a single?Full bars of that stuff can be £100s.

Alan

More the problem. We get parts made, supplier keeps tooling and drawing's we have paid for, from which to make more parts to sell and undercut us

That's called business Rob, it works that way nearly all the time in industry. Large companies spend a fortune trying to protect their intellectual property and still fail miserably! It boils down to whether you want a part made or not, nothing more nothing less. I agree we as a club would always own the drawings, that goes without saying, however we have no control over whether a supplier chooses to over manufacture and sell on the surplus at a later date.

[SPRIDDLER]

When I was in the plastic injection moulding industry in the 70's we would invoice the customer with '49% Part tool cost' for a new plastic moulding tool (which in fact was all of the tool cost ) and this was often ten or fifteen thousand pounds. Life was good.
When the Chinese began competing with us they didn't charge anything for tooling (which they claimed as their property) but produced and supplied high quality parts from the customer's tooling to anyone. Their remoteness, the language difficulty and the cost of legal action made it impossible to stop them.

BTW - Even 40 years ago it took us 16 weeks (the plastics industry 'norm') to go from customer's drawings to making a 'soft' tool to submitting pre-prod samples, then another 6 weeks to harden the tool and start production runs. The Chinese could do the whole lot in about 3 weeks at less than half our quote Our industrial manufacturing group folded.

[REW]

I note that the FBHVC journal issue 1 of 2019 carries an article relevant to this discussion on page 14: http://fbhvc.co.uk/members-pages/newsletter-archive/

[Rob Harknett]

I think care needs to be taken on this. We could end up with 100s of individual suppliers. A nightmare for the accounts team.

There are several grades of bronze, so as an opener, what grade is specified for the timing side crankshaft bush for a single?Full bars of that stuff can be £100s.

Alan

More the problem. We get parts made, supplier keeps tooling and drawing's we have paid for, from which to make more parts to sell and undercut us

That's called business Rob, it works that way nearly all the time in industry. Large companies spend a fortune trying to protect their intellectual property and still fail miserably! It boils down to whether you want a part made or not, nothing more nothing less. I agree we as a club would always own the drawings, that goes without saying, however we have no control over whether a supplier chooses to over manufacture and sell on the surplus at a later date.

True, as AMC are no longer supply. So we are like another link in the chain. You would think we should be able to get any parts made, that we have already commissioned to be made. So only need drawings and tooling etc. for new parts we have never commissioned to have made. Some of those drawings probably now no longer of an acceptable standard. For use on CNC machines. We used to have written agreement with at least one main supplier, re selling parts that we commissioned, paid for tooling etc. I have made many items from just a customers rough picture or drawing. Got the item to the customers satisfaction, having had to make drawings jigs etc. The drawing I made drawn up properly for the customer. We get an order to make just 20 off. Having done all the leg work etc. The customer then goes off placing an order for 1,000's with another company. I said once to my boss about an item we spent a lot of time making a prototype of, only getting an order for 20. Then seeing Tesco's full of that Point of Sale product. I told him we are getting mugged. He agreed but said what can we do about it ??? I said charge them more that's about all we can do. Having seen his costing's. He had only costed my machining time + a couple of £ more than he was paying me. I said my garage charges 3 x more for labour, than you have charged for mine. Trying to satisfy me I then saw he uped my rate, so I could see it in his costings. He then took me out to buy a new machine I had been complaining needs replacing.

I am sure all the members must know what you are up against Rob and others. Also you are all doing your best to get spares made. So keep trying. and feel some satisfaction in what you are doing.

[ajscomboman]

When new parts are commissioned we pay for the tooling and it's ours for future production same applies to any drawings we commission, thats a natural action to take, what we can't control is the temptation of manufacturers to over produce and then possibly sell on. To be fair that doesn't happen very often but it can and it has to be accepted.
But if catch anyone copying my centre stand, heaven help them!!!