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Thread: Chinese Grizzly machines

  1. #1
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    Chinese Grizzly machines

    I read on here a while back that Grizzly has moved their lathe production to China. Just wondering if anyone on this forum has purchased one and recieved a machine made in China and do they notice any difference in the quality, if you have used one made in the USA. Are they labeled "Made in China"?

  2. #2
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    Last year I bought a Grizzly G0766 Lathe and yes, it came from China and was marked on the crate as such. I believe that it was manufactured by the Burt Group.

    It is a good lathe and has a lot of features given its low price point. There were a few problems (exacerbated because I bought one of the first production lots) but Grizz customer svc eventually satisfied me. If you do some searches, you'll find a fair amount of discussion.

  3. Most of the more popular lathes are Asian......either China or Taiwain, ROC, which even from what I understand even the ones made in Taiwain, ROC have some castings made in China foundry's as well. With the controls companies are able to put into manufacturing contracts, then most of the time a good machine can be had. Of course, one price point about Grizzly is that they cut out the retail dealers and markups, and direct distribute to the customer which saves a good bit of cash.

    My G0766 has not had any problems whatsoever. The trip across the ocean did vibrate the RPM sensor lose from its mount, but that was a simple thing to put it back in a put the nut on the mount. The only thing is that if you want to use a 1" aftermarket post in your banjo, then you will have to make the hole in it a little larger with a drill bit, but many 25mm posts are becoming available as well.....a lot of European and Asian lathes are standard with the 25mm post on the rest, and the G0766 is sold overseas with other labels on them other than Grizzly.
    A lot of parts are interchangeable with the Asian makes, including Grizz, PM, Jet and others....just FYI.
    Last edited by Roger Chandler; 11-12-2016 at 1:07 PM.
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  4. #4
    I doubt Grizzly ever made lathes in the US.

  5. #5
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    I bought two chinese Grizzly machines this summer, a 15 in planer and 12 in jointer. No problem with the planer but recently the motor died on the jointer. Grizzly had a new motor here in few days and its up and running fine now. I could have probably fixed the motor, the centrifugal switch had shifted, at least thats what the engineer thought it was. Seems some things get knocked around on the long trip here from China. But the customer service is great.... so any issues are taken care of. At least that's my experience.

  6. #6
    I have a Grizzly GO800 lathe made by the Harvey Group the also make lathes for Laguna, Powermatic, and others. China has pretty much taken over the machine tool bussiness. Just retired from a machine shop/manafacturing bussiness and they started buying new CNCs from China and Korea about ten years ago to replace the ones we had purchased from Japan. Same old story Japen undercut American manafactures, now China is doing the same to Japan.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jobe View Post
    Just wondering if anyone on this forum has purchased one and recieved a machine made in China and do they notice any difference in the quality, if you have used one made in the USA. Are they labeled "Made in China"?
    Pretty sure Grizzly has never sold a lathe made in the US. The key is the China and Taiwan built machines are increasing in quality almost across the board, so the new Grizzly machines are almost all better than ones from 10 years ago. Lathes are one of the machines Grizzly has made huge leaps in quality of design and production just in the last 5-6 years. For an idea of what a US built lathe costs compare Grizzly et al to Robust which is made in the US.
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