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I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay. Skill and care is required to make them,

I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay. Skill and care is required to make them, apparently their education system collapsed a generation ago. [Edit/PS] This serves as a cautionary tale against neglecting Industrial Arts Education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jig_grinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jig_grinder

hirundo 4y ago
Here's Peter Zeihan saying the same thing about Russia's use of Iranian drones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToagLbv0140 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToagLbv0140 He says they're mopeds with wings, and a third rate US factory could churn them out, but Russia can't build them.
- cdot2 4y ago
  A lot of the manufacturing ability that we take for granted is uncommon in much of the world. For example China was not able to manufacture ball point pen tips before 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18/finally-china-manufactures-a-ballpoint-pen-all-by-itself/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > China was not able to manufacture ball point pen tips before 2017. IIRC, the issue wasn't so much that the couldn't make them, but the ones that they could make were clearly inferior. According to this, it seems like the problem was more one of metallurgy: https://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-ballpoint-pens-steel-japan/ https://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-ballpoint-pens-steel-ja...
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > [Peter Zeihan] says they're mopeds with wings, and a third rate US factory could churn them out, but Russia can't build them. Who is he to make a technical evaluation of drone quality? Americans are very biased to assume everything made by anyone besides their first-world allies is crap, and IMHO that kind of thinking will be their undoing. Russia is adapting to sudden supply chain constraints it was obviously unprepared for, and Iran almost certainly has a lot more experience dealing with (and working around) them. Russia could have all the skill in the world, but they won't be able to build anything if they can't source some critical part for their existing designs. If Iran has the parts for their designs, they can build.
  - WJW 4y ago
    Honestly they are kind of crap in the sense that they really are mopeds with wings, which have sometimes even been shot out of the air by policemen with small arms. They are decidedly not crap in the sense that the type of air defense most nations have developed so far will struggle engaging such drones cost effectively. If you use a 500k missile to shoot down a 20k drone, that is a win for the drone operator. If you don't shoot it down and it severely damages a 10m power plant, that is also a win for the drone operator. The aircraft vs air defense arms race in the past couple of decades has been towards more capable (and thus more expensive) platforms on both sides, leaving room for this kind of cheap drone on the bottom of the market. There are plenty of systems that can cost-effectively engage drones though, from old-style flak guns to other cheap drones to (in the future) lasers. It is only a matter of time before the West finds proper countermeasures.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      The last part is wishful thinking. The Germans found no counter measures for tanks in WWI and neither did the French in WWII. The only viable counter to tanks between 1915 and 1955 were more tanks as the USSR and US showed.
      - mellavora 4y ago
        Bazooka? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka Molotov cocktail? "the time-honored anti-tank weapon of last resort." https://www.thearmorylife.com/molotov-cocktail-vs-tank-a-history-of-this-desperate-measure/ https://www.thearmorylife.com/molotov-cocktail-vs-tank-a-his...
        tablespoon 4y ago
        I think the key word is "viable." IIRC the Bazooka was better than nothing but not particularly effective. And your quote's characterization of the Molotov cocktail as a "weapon of last resort" speaks to its ineffectiveness.
        4y ago
- conductr 4y ago
  They could if they wanted to. They’re fighting a war and have an immediate need.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    But do they have the equipment, the materials, the money and the workforce for it? What they can import is heavily restricted; there was another article that said the chips they import now are grey market, lower grade stuff with a much higher failure rate. You can't even make a moped with wings if your chips don't even work. I guess you could make dumb drones but what's the point if they're less accurate than WW2 V1 / V2 ?
- greedo 4y ago
  If you follow @kamilkazani, he talks about how the fall of the USSR crippled Russia's manufacturing ability; without Western help, it's toast.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  I mean the fact that a significant portion of its potential workers has either been drafted into the army, went into hiding or fled the country probably isn't doing them much good either.
impossiblefork 4y ago
Many things that are quite cheap require very specialized knowledge. It's not appropriate to send a bunch of scientific instrument builders on a major project when you can just buy it. Notice also that tools like these made in China exist, but that they still wanted this US tool. Perhaps they already have many of the same model, or it's actually special.
- shagie 4y ago
  Consider the humble ball point pen and the difficulty of making it in China. Finally, China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself - https://wapo.st/3ySmwlG https://wapo.st/3ySmwlG And when you get into it... > The tip of a ballpoint pen is what makes it a ballpoint pen. At the tip, a freely rotating ball is held in a small socket which connects it to an ink reservoir that allows the pen to write or draw lines. Manufacturing a ballpoint pen tip that can write comfortably for a long period of time requires high-precision machinery and precisely thin steel, but for years China was unable to match those crafted by foreign companies. It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse. (and after pulling that up, I see that a recent cousin comment in another thread brings the same article and point)
  - conductr 4y ago
    > It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse In the middle of fighting a war no less, time is a factor.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    >common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse. Basically. Especially relevant for the ballpoint pen anecdote which wasn't about how hard it was to make ball point tips, but some products were not economically worth pursuing over existing off the shelf solutions, but STILL important to develop indigenously due to gaining knowledge/capabilities that knockon/support ther strategic / critical sectors. The TLDR is Premier LiKeQiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, using rough PRC ball-point tips quality as example, and 2 years later PRC industry developed tungsten carbide manufacturing capabilities for advanced munitions. There was no economically sensible reason for domestic ballpoint tip manufacturing, the entire market dominated by Japanese and Swiss was only worth 20M. Zero rationale for Chinese industry to coordinate tons of resources for this project outside of national security. An related apocryphal annedote I read was the steel for tips made in JP/CHE were made in small batches (because tips are tiny), ditto with early half assed PRC efforts. But for ball point pen project, a state steelwork (high volume, billion dollar operation) had to stop the lines to make an industrial sized batch with correct metallurgy at a financial loss. 100+ billion of domestic PRC ballpoint tips made in the past 5 years have barely chipped away at that batch.
jbay808 4y ago
I'm guessing that this was a Moore jig grinder. There are few places in the world still capable of manufacturing a machine such as those. I'm not sure if even America still can. The fact that they go for $5000 on eBay is not a testament to them being easy to manufacture. It's a testament to their incredible abilities being underappreciated in the modern world, such that their manufacturers have virtually disappeared or gone into other businesses.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  I went on a deep dive on mechanical accuracy based on a post here on HN of the book authored by Wayne Moore, the founder of that company. Really fascinating to dig into how everything starts from extremely flat reference planes, and how that accuracy can get transferred to other geometries to build high accuracy cnc machines. https://ia800104.us.archive.org/20/items/FoundationsOfMechanicalAccuracy/Foundations_of_Mechanical_Accuracy.pdf https://ia800104.us.archive.org/20/items/FoundationsOfMechan...
  - jbay808 4y ago
    Indeed, although the machines were designed to be manually operated and not CNC. The precision is such that they never wear out, because the surfaces are geometrically accurate to the point that even the leadscrew has full-area contact against its mating surface. Moore does not, and sadly cannot, make these machines anymore.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Are you talking about a specific model? They appear to be selling high precision jig grinders from Connecticut, which sounds similar to what the Justice Department’s statement is referring to. https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html#mooreprogrind https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html#mooreprogrind
      - jbay808 4y ago
        Yes, the #3. (I should have clarified that). The new CNC machines are not the same as the ones in the book the GP linked to. CNC use requires ballscrews and roller ways, instead of leadscrews and sliding ways. As a result the machine and its manufacturing process are quite different. But you're right, the article specifies that it's computer controlled, so probably not a #3.
nazca 4y ago
I agree, but imagine how many things we commonly use in the US that we don't make and would be impossible to get if China & couple other countries introduced export controls on them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PeterisP 4y ago
Specialized tooling is hard to make. For example, Russia is currently suffering from a reduction in railway capacity as they are unable to make some types of replacement ball bearings for rail cars, and they are also unable to make the devices for manufacturing them. The world is quite interconnected, and if you can buy a rare component at a good quality and price whenever you need one, then bootstrapping an industry for that doesn't make sense - since you alone anyways won't have the scale required to be cost-effective for it.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Russia today is ironically poised for a communist revolution more so than at any other point in the last 30 years. A centrally planned economy is the only way for a third world nation to industrialize and they need that badly.
pc86 4y ago
How many times are you going to post the same provably false comment?
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I would imagine China still has the capacity to make these though, they're the world's biggest manufacturer, which includes precision machines. (I recall a Chinese company buying up all the stock of automated CNC machines for YEARS to meet Apple's demand for the macbook and iphone when they were all aluminium. Not as precise as these though).
lm28469 4y ago
> I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay. If you dig a bit you'll find it's the case for a lot of things. Outsourcing production to Asia&co completely wiped entire industries, the knowledge is gone after one or two generations. Once the infrastructure and the knowledge are gone it's game over, you have to start from scratch again
SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
The indictment mentions it was a CNC jig grinder, so not an old manual machine.

hirundo 4y ago

Here's Peter Zeihan saying the same thing about Russia's use of Iranian drones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToagLbv0140 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToagLbv0140 He says they're mopeds with wings, and a third rate US factory could churn them out, but Russia can't build them.

cdot2 4y ago
A lot of the manufacturing ability that we take for granted is uncommon in much of the world. For example China was not able to manufacture ball point pen tips before 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18/finally-china-manufactures-a-ballpoint-pen-all-by-itself/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > China was not able to manufacture ball point pen tips before 2017. IIRC, the issue wasn't so much that the couldn't make them, but the ones that they could make were clearly inferior. According to this, it seems like the problem was more one of metallurgy: https://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-ballpoint-pens-steel-japan/ https://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-ballpoint-pens-steel-ja...
tablespoon 4y ago
> [Peter Zeihan] says they're mopeds with wings, and a third rate US factory could churn them out, but Russia can't build them. Who is he to make a technical evaluation of drone quality? Americans are very biased to assume everything made by anyone besides their first-world allies is crap, and IMHO that kind of thinking will be their undoing. Russia is adapting to sudden supply chain constraints it was obviously unprepared for, and Iran almost certainly has a lot more experience dealing with (and working around) them. Russia could have all the skill in the world, but they won't be able to build anything if they can't source some critical part for their existing designs. If Iran has the parts for their designs, they can build.
- WJW 4y ago
  Honestly they are kind of crap in the sense that they really are mopeds with wings, which have sometimes even been shot out of the air by policemen with small arms. They are decidedly not crap in the sense that the type of air defense most nations have developed so far will struggle engaging such drones cost effectively. If you use a 500k missile to shoot down a 20k drone, that is a win for the drone operator. If you don't shoot it down and it severely damages a 10m power plant, that is also a win for the drone operator. The aircraft vs air defense arms race in the past couple of decades has been towards more capable (and thus more expensive) platforms on both sides, leaving room for this kind of cheap drone on the bottom of the market. There are plenty of systems that can cost-effectively engage drones though, from old-style flak guns to other cheap drones to (in the future) lasers. It is only a matter of time before the West finds proper countermeasures.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    The last part is wishful thinking. The Germans found no counter measures for tanks in WWI and neither did the French in WWII. The only viable counter to tanks between 1915 and 1955 were more tanks as the USSR and US showed.
    - mellavora 4y ago
      Bazooka? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazooka Molotov cocktail? "the time-honored anti-tank weapon of last resort." https://www.thearmorylife.com/molotov-cocktail-vs-tank-a-history-of-this-desperate-measure/ https://www.thearmorylife.com/molotov-cocktail-vs-tank-a-his...
      - tablespoon 4y ago
        I think the key word is "viable." IIRC the Bazooka was better than nothing but not particularly effective. And your quote's characterization of the Molotov cocktail as a "weapon of last resort" speaks to its ineffectiveness.
      - 4y ago
conductr 4y ago
They could if they wanted to. They’re fighting a war and have an immediate need.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  But do they have the equipment, the materials, the money and the workforce for it? What they can import is heavily restricted; there was another article that said the chips they import now are grey market, lower grade stuff with a much higher failure rate. You can't even make a moped with wings if your chips don't even work. I guess you could make dumb drones but what's the point if they're less accurate than WW2 V1 / V2 ?
greedo 4y ago
If you follow @kamilkazani, he talks about how the fall of the USSR crippled Russia's manufacturing ability; without Western help, it's toast.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I mean the fact that a significant portion of its potential workers has either been drafted into the army, went into hiding or fled the country probably isn't doing them much good either.

impossiblefork 4y ago

Many things that are quite cheap require very specialized knowledge. It's not appropriate to send a bunch of scientific instrument builders on a major project when you can just buy it. Notice also that tools like these made in China exist, but that they still wanted this US tool. Perhaps they already have many of the same model, or it's actually special.

shagie 4y ago
Consider the humble ball point pen and the difficulty of making it in China. Finally, China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself - https://wapo.st/3ySmwlG https://wapo.st/3ySmwlG And when you get into it... > The tip of a ballpoint pen is what makes it a ballpoint pen. At the tip, a freely rotating ball is held in a small socket which connects it to an ink reservoir that allows the pen to write or draw lines. Manufacturing a ballpoint pen tip that can write comfortably for a long period of time requires high-precision machinery and precisely thin steel, but for years China was unable to match those crafted by foreign companies. It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse. (and after pulling that up, I see that a recent cousin comment in another thread brings the same article and point)
- conductr 4y ago
  > It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse In the middle of fighting a war no less, time is a factor.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  >common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse. Basically. Especially relevant for the ballpoint pen anecdote which wasn't about how hard it was to make ball point tips, but some products were not economically worth pursuing over existing off the shelf solutions, but STILL important to develop indigenously due to gaining knowledge/capabilities that knockon/support ther strategic / critical sectors. The TLDR is Premier LiKeQiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, using rough PRC ball-point tips quality as example, and 2 years later PRC industry developed tungsten carbide manufacturing capabilities for advanced munitions. There was no economically sensible reason for domestic ballpoint tip manufacturing, the entire market dominated by Japanese and Swiss was only worth 20M. Zero rationale for Chinese industry to coordinate tons of resources for this project outside of national security. An related apocryphal annedote I read was the steel for tips made in JP/CHE were made in small batches (because tips are tiny), ditto with early half assed PRC efforts. But for ball point pen project, a state steelwork (high volume, billion dollar operation) had to stop the lines to make an industrial sized batch with correct metallurgy at a financial loss. 100+ billion of domestic PRC ballpoint tips made in the past 5 years have barely chipped away at that batch.

jbay808 4y ago

I'm guessing that this was a Moore jig grinder. There are few places in the world still capable of manufacturing a machine such as those. I'm not sure if even America still can. The fact that they go for $5000 on eBay is not a testament to them being easy to manufacture. It's a testament to their incredible abilities being underappreciated in the modern world, such that their manufacturers have virtually disappeared or gone into other businesses.

etrautmann 4y ago
I went on a deep dive on mechanical accuracy based on a post here on HN of the book authored by Wayne Moore, the founder of that company. Really fascinating to dig into how everything starts from extremely flat reference planes, and how that accuracy can get transferred to other geometries to build high accuracy cnc machines. https://ia800104.us.archive.org/20/items/FoundationsOfMechanicalAccuracy/Foundations_of_Mechanical_Accuracy.pdf https://ia800104.us.archive.org/20/items/FoundationsOfMechan...
- jbay808 4y ago
  Indeed, although the machines were designed to be manually operated and not CNC. The precision is such that they never wear out, because the surfaces are geometrically accurate to the point that even the leadscrew has full-area contact against its mating surface. Moore does not, and sadly cannot, make these machines anymore.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Are you talking about a specific model? They appear to be selling high precision jig grinders from Connecticut, which sounds similar to what the Justice Department’s statement is referring to. https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html#mooreprogrind https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html#mooreprogrind
    - jbay808 4y ago
      Yes, the #3. (I should have clarified that). The new CNC machines are not the same as the ones in the book the GP linked to. CNC use requires ballscrews and roller ways, instead of leadscrews and sliding ways. As a result the machine and its manufacturing process are quite different. But you're right, the article specifies that it's computer controlled, so probably not a #3.

nazca 4y ago

I agree, but imagine how many things we commonly use in the US that we don't make and would be impossible to get if China & couple other countries introduced export controls on them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

PeterisP 4y ago

Specialized tooling is hard to make. For example, Russia is currently suffering from a reduction in railway capacity as they are unable to make some types of replacement ball bearings for rail cars, and they are also unable to make the devices for manufacturing them. The world is quite interconnected, and if you can buy a rare component at a good quality and price whenever you need one, then bootstrapping an industry for that doesn't make sense - since you alone anyways won't have the scale required to be cost-effective for it.

thrown_22 4y ago
Russia today is ironically poised for a communist revolution more so than at any other point in the last 30 years. A centrally planned economy is the only way for a third world nation to industrialize and they need that badly.

pc86 4y ago

How many times are you going to post the same provably false comment?

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I would imagine China still has the capacity to make these though, they're the world's biggest manufacturer, which includes precision machines. (I recall a Chinese company buying up all the stock of automated CNC machines for YEARS to meet Apple's demand for the macbook and iphone when they were all aluminium. Not as precise as these though).

lm28469 4y ago

> I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay. If you dig a bit you'll find it's the case for a lot of things. Outsourcing production to Asia&co completely wiped entire industries, the knowledge is gone after one or two generations. Once the infrastructure and the knowledge are gone it's game over, you have to start from scratch again

SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago

The indictment mentions it was a CNC jig grinder, so not an old manual machine.