**The following was listed on MR’s newsletter: “**Bowser has recently installed 3 new plastic injection molding machines. Soon most of our cars and locomotives will be made in house! Visit our website to watch our progress!” I can’t help but think that this is part (if not wholly) due to the manufacturing shortcomings in China. Maybe, we should sigh a collective sigh of relief and hope that other manufacturers follow suit. Aside from making getting models more reliably, it will create new jobs at home, instead of abroad.
Way to go Bowser![bow]
Dave
Marlon,
I wonder, too, because of the time crunch and delays with manufacturing product in other countries, whether manufacturers in the US might be tempted to try and buy “time” from Bowser in regards to the injection molding aspect of the process?
Probably not. Bowser most likely needs all three injection molding machines to keep up with their own manufacturing scheduling. And, it probably wouldn’t save any development costs by doing this at home then shipping it over across the Pacific for to have it assembled. But…maybe it would.
Railroads have shared trackage rights with other competing railroads in the past. Unless Bowser is injection molding 24/7, manufacturers may see if they can have their own product runs during off times at the Bowser factory. [^o)]
Tom
The Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.” Hmmm…earlier we learned from our Canadian Model Trains folks that they are biting it and going ‘in-house’. Whole hog. Now Bowser, whose demise we all seemed to forecast just 36 months ago, announces that it is putting hard cash into some new tooling. What’s next…M. B. Klein announces that it will begin producing N Scale steamers in six different varieties? MTH and BLI will bury the hatchet and co-operate on HO models in DCC…only?
Maybe BLI will finally offer a variety of USRA Pacifics…who knows?
Crandell
I wonder, too, because of the time crunch and delays with manufacturing product in other countries, whether manufacturers in the US might be tempted to try and buy “time” from Bowser in regards to the injection molding aspect of the process?
I don’t know why they’d want to, especially since plastic molding machines seem to be in ample supply on the second-hand market. If you take a look at the pics from Bowser, those machines are second-hand. In fact, they’re no longer listed as being in production by the manufacturer. http://dr-boy.de/de/product/start/ The newest BOY 50 variant injection molders I’ve seen online available for sale are at least 10 years old.
Andre
Andre, it’s more than just the supply. I think it would probably be less expensive to lease time on a machine than to buy one, even used, if you are contemplating a rather limited production schedule.
As for old machinery - I heard that the huge horizontal lathe used to machine the main strength rings of a couple of big transport aircraft in the '60s had been built a century earlier - to machine the turret ring for USS Monitor…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
In my business of restoring old houses we often buy custom milled woodwork. I have close relationships with the owners of several such firms here in the Baltimore area.
The average age of a molder in use in the various shops I deal with, a machine that spins a blade to cut wood molding profiles, is about 100 years. Same is true of T&G machines, that make wood flooring and T&G beadboard.
When they occasionally break down, they take the broken part down the street to a machine shop, who makes a new part on a 50-75 year old lathe or milling machine.
A 10 year old injection molder - that’s like brand new.
In my view, there is a lot to be said for actually owning the means of production. All the people I know in both the wood milling business and the machine shop business own their equipment and are doing very well. One guy who’s shop is within walking distance of my house has a building full of both old school machines and the latest CNC stuff - he makes parts for NASA - but still has time and interest in making GRAVELY tractor parts for me.
Somewhere, somehow, people need to take pride in what they create - not just how well they play some shell game.
I design, build and restore houses - they have yet to find a way to out source that.
I wish Bowser all the best.
Sheldon
Andre
So, if I am correct you are saying that the machinery to produce plastic models in North America is readily available. That is a good thing!
I predict that as China suffers increasing labour and material costs and production delays we will see a whole lot more people snapping up those 10 year old molding machines. I suspect that Bowser having their own molding machines in house would significantly reduce the minimum production numbers required to make a profit on any single product. They may be on the edge of the new production model for supplying this hobby.
How long this will take to see any real effect on the hobby (if it ever does) is anyone’s guess, but again I applaude Bowser for their efforts.
Also, if assembly costs remain daunting in North America, we might actually see the revival of the ‘kit’. Suits me fine!
Dave
Bowser makes quite a variety of products, so those machines can be kept pretty busy. What makes very little sense to me is that Bowser freight car pieces parts are molded in the US and shipped to China for assembly. At least that’s what the website says.Then again, after thinking about it…
.I know that it costs an Austrailian vintner 10 cents/bottle to ship wine in containers to the US, so actual transportation charges aren’t that high. OTOH, it seems to me that shipping semi-finished goods overseas for assembly and then shipping the completed items back is a rather convoluted process that carries with it the aroma of Rube Goldberg. Outsourcing to save a buck doesn’t really explain much in this case. Assembly work of this kind is rather low skilled and low paid anyway, so my guess is that if assembly is outsourced, it’s not because it’s cheaper but that Bowser can’t find people willing to do low wage repetitive work on a full time basis year in and year out… One of the things you do need in manufacturing is a reliable labor force and if you can’t find it at home, you gotta look elsewhere.
Andre
There are plenty of contract manufacturers here that a model train company can contract with if they decide to move production here. In terms of other companies outsourcing production domestically, Bowser is probably a little fish in a big lake.
Hopefully, Bowser will start making more models of cars common in the 1980s, 1990s, and presently.
http://www.thomasnet.com/products/contract-manufacturing-17871203-1.html
Andre,
Before moving completely to overseas production, Athearn did the same thing - injection molding here, assembly in China.
It is my understanding that RTR Intermountain products are done the same way.
In the late 1970’s, early 1980’s, when MATCO tools was formed, their sockets were made by ALLEN Manufacturing, the first company to “pressure form” sockets. They bought the steel they desired in Germany where the blanks were cut to length, then sent to Japan for the pressure forming process, then sent to the USA for the final truing, harding, labling and finishing.
Their socket was twice as strong as the “broached” sockets being made here by Snap On and others at about half the cost.
Because the product was partly made in the USA and not exported, it had no country of origin marked on the product or packaging.
So this kind of “round the world” manufacturing is nothing new.
The fixed costs of assembly labor here are too high - not mainly the result of actual wages, but the result of other factors - factors we (or me in particular) are not allowed to discuss here.
Bowser is in both the kit and RTR business like Intermountain. I suspect, like Accurail, they have found that kits can be produced here at a reasonable cost and keeping their tooling here has a number of advantages - like not having it stolen or used by the competition - like MTH and Lionel years ago.
Sheldon
PS - It would not surprise me one bit to find out that in some warehouse here in the USA, sits the originals of all the ATHEARN and MDC tooling, and that the China production is being done with duplicates.
Considering the somewhat seamless transition ATHEARN made to overseas production and the clear business savy of Horizon, this seems very possible. (and, my personal examination of some of the products suggests very slight changes and variations in some of the parts)
All model train manufacturers are little fish in a little pond, Bowser is without question one of the medium fish. Their products may not be on your radar because of the era you model, they are a big player in this hobby.
Sheldon
My brother worked for Precision Valve in NY 20 years ago; they invented the aerosol valve, a small assembly of plastic and metal (spring) parts. They made the parts in house in NY and shipped them to Mexico for assembly and then returned to NY for packaging. It was cheaper to outsource the assembly and pay for shipping than it was to assemble them right there in the same building they were made! This was 20 years ago! I am sure the same holds true today. I really applaud Bowser for making this move and hopefully others will follow suit. Hopefully they will assemble their models here as well. I would be willing to pay a little more for a ‘made in USA’ kit or model.
-Bob
Earlier than that, even. Maquiladoras started in the mid-60s.
Maybe the blue box will be back and we will all be assembling again!
I had a tour of the Bowser place in December 2008 a few days before X-mas.
They still had at the time the metal casting equipment for the old metal boilered locos......it was on the first floor in the back of the building where the hobby shop is now (Englishs Model Trains)
When I asked the guy that gave the tour if they did their own plastic injection molding he had said it was done by a company down the road in Northumberland PA.
They only thing they really did their was paint and pad print the cars they sell.
Maybe the company they were dealing with is closing shop?
What happened to the Facebook page that Bowser had?
This is very close to what’s going on. I heard from someone who knows that one of the owners of the shop down the road is/was retiring. This meant that production would slow down, resulting in longer lead times for Bowser to get their “stuff”. So they bought their own machines to avoid production delay.
I was going to say, that sounds like a very reasonable explanation. In fact that could be where they got the machines from - so their tooling already works with it. Or the reason they purchased odler machines, besides cost issues - ones compatible with the existing tooling.
–Randy
The cost is in the molds or dies and not the molding machines.
Let me clarify. There were people on here speculating that perhaps other model railroad companies may want to outsource their injection molding to Bowser since Bowser just bought some injection molding machines. My point was that there are many contract manufacturers around and the are probably several hundred, if not thousands, of injection molded machines in North America that a model train company could outsource there injection molding to.
I do have a few of Bowser’s 100 ton, open hoppers. One of these days I intend to buy a few of their S-12s and paint them for Sierra Railroad and possibly SP, even though there were no SP S-12s at the time I am modeling.