£35??

I think it would cost Mitutoyo more than that to actually make them.

If it looks too good to be true……

A Moore & Wright one from Machine DRO is £23.93 at the moment. I doubt if made in Sheffield but I don't think that they would put their name on anything dubious.

I had one for a birthday present and cannot fault it, even came with a spare battery.

I have no connection with M-DRO except as a satisfied customer.

Brian

Undoubtedly fake. I recently bought the real thing from Cutwel and am very pleased with them. I also own a Moore and Wright one that I have had for ages and are good. Added to these are a pile of generic Chinese callipers that range from the pretty good to the downright awful (Aldi workzone £7.99 each but still accurate).

Personally I wouldn't waste my time with the fakes. There are better offerings for less money and from UK suppliers.

David.

last one I bought was made in Mitutoyo's Brazil factory. Bad quality mechanism, slide full of greasy grit too. Poor value for money, I was very disappointed as they were a brand I trusted before. Very unlike previous ones I bought over the years (for me and for firms I worked for) made in the far east which were very high quality. I won't be buying any more Brazilian made Mitutoyo instruments.

I think Mitutoyo could afford to take clear, high resolution photographs

The Mitutoyo Group map shows only two manufacturing sites. One in China, the other in Brazil.

It's a trend! We live in a world in which the best place to manufacture is wherever it happens to be cheapest. Multinationals don't care if that's Sheffield, Timbuktu, or the South Pole, and they move whenever it suits them.

Great Britain in the 19th century was a good place to make stuff. Politically stable, plenty of coal, iron ore, clay, limestone, water, and other minerals, excellent internal and maritime communications, plus a growing trading empire supplying raw materials and keen to buy manufactured goods. Tthe British Empire covered about 25% of the world's population and big markets are better than small ones.

The UK's unique position didn't last. First, Belgium then Germany, France, and the USA followed. (At one time there were more steam engines in Cornwall than the whole of the continental USA…) Then Sweden, Italy, Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and many others. Today, all the Empires have gone, and even more countries manufacture on a large scale: India, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Israel, South Korea, Mexico and – biggest of all – China.

Apart from very high-end products, manufacturing is rather ordinary, not requiring deep skills. Not difficult to operate in undeveloped places, especially now basic education is much more widespread. Much deskilling is due to ongoing efforts to eliminate people from production, and especially to get rid of skilled people. Nothing personal, but people are expensive to pay and train, slow, deeply small 'c' conservative and they make lots of mistakes! For the financial health of a company, it's better to automate wherever possible. Machine Centres don't strike when management decides one is useless, and the fired machine doesn't get redundancy or a pension!

Sadly, it's not enough to be British, or any other nationality, to achieve industrial success. That requires politicians, management, owners, workforce and public opinion to be agile, up-to-date, and ready to adapt. Manufacturing is brutally competitive and there isn't room for chaps who resist change, want to be paid loads of money for inefficient working methods, ignore accountants, believe the customer owes them a living, and can't comprehend they might be part of the problem. Nor for lacklustre management, poor investment decisions, refusal to relocate, treating the workforce with contempt, absentee owners, political dogma, ignoring market trends and generally refusing to admit anything about the business needs fixing.

Tempting though it is to apply 'simples' Meerkat logic and assume unpleasant change is due to Asiatic cheating, I suggest the root causes are much more complicated. The answer is to respond to realities, not to blame someone else. Believing everything made is Asia must be carp is head-in-the-sand dangerous. We have to compete, not deny it.

However, the British economy and industry have both adapted rather well over the last half-century. Having sparked the Industrial Revolution, the British moved on by inventing the 'Post-Industrial' economy, which is also a success. Although British industry is less obvious and employs far fewer people today, it earns as much money as it ever did. It hasn't gone down the toilet as many forum members seem to think. Those painfully closed Industries, like shipbuilding, steel, heavy chemicals, mining, railways, heavy engineering, and obsolete car-makers were all losing money on a grand scale, often blaming foreigners and low-quality imports for their misfortune instead of gripping the problem by upgrading or doing something else. Too many British manufacturing businesses crashed with appalling consequences for whole communities, and it's sad to watch much the same happening to US industry and others in more recent times. Partly because once people become comfy in a job, they do anything to avoid change, even when all the red lights are flashing.

Manufacturings purpose is to earn money, not to wave the flag, or let me to feel feel superior to other chaps. Better to back Hairdressers than Capstan Lathe Operators, because – despite their skills and past value, lathe operators are mostly redundant today, which is what matters.

China's current success is impressive, as was Japan's decades before. However, their success is high-risk. It depends heavily on non-sustainables like fossil fuels, inexpensive compliant labour, and cheap containerised transport. All are fraying at the edges, and whilst other countries are snapping at China's heels, robotics and AI are set to make it cheaper to manufacture goods locally. Guess what happens to China when it's cheaper to make stuff in Indonesia, Europe, the USA, or anywhere else…

You might well question if the tide in the affairs of men described above is a 'good thing'. I suspect not, because it depends on endless economic growth, which is impossible. Sooner or later there will have to be another painful shake out. I have no idea what it will be.

Dave

Great post Dave and all true.

I work for a UK company but now owned by a faceless American consortium, their mantra is profit first quality of product a distant second.

Some of our equipment is manufactured in China, but the Chinese wages are increasing, the Chinese worker wants western luxuries, colour TV, car etc, and it is increasingly there is a shift for many Western manufacturers who use China as a cheap place to make their "stuff", to relocate to other countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia…..and even back here to the UK…

Yes I know it's not a model engineering topic but it does sort of affect where we buy "our" stuff from..

Regards

Derek

S O D's "Shake out" may already be upon us, and has been gathering momentum, globally for the last year.

Survival of the fittest, (strongest, most quickly adaptable ) is quite likely to become evident.

Howard

Quality is first of all designed and specified into a product. A good design and properly specified materials can still be ruined by a poor manufacturing process or poor adherence to the process. Lots of quality brands manufacture in China and due to rigid process control they maintain the standard for which they are famed. Automation is good for keeping a process under control but a fault can produce a pile of scrap very quickly.

Mike

Its a fake for certain, I have one but mine cost £32 and assuming its from the same manufacturer (which it may not be of course) then its great value for money. It is a very good copy of the Mitutoyo but there are some slight differences which you would hardly notice unless you were doing a comparison against the genuine product..

Mine is very good especially considering the price, its super smooth well made and accurate in that it matches my genuine Mityutoyo spot on. My elderly Mitutoyo is starting to lose its display so took a gamble on one of the copies and I am not disappointed, whether there are a number of copies though with some not so good I dont know.