New Product: Grizzly Jointer/Planer Combo

[Noel Hegan]

Why stop there? Lets allow our children to "borrow" ideas from one another. Why not let let literary's greatest works be made better, heck I could simplfy one of John Steinback's novels and make it "better" ....as stated in some arguements here there is a very fine line between innovation and "plagerism". Do not students get thrown out of universities for this? Wasn't there a term somewhere coined as "industrial espionage" ? In my opinion, dismantling someone else's product in order to come up with your own is nothing more that "plagerism" at its finest. Do not confuse "product development" with stealing. Wasn't human cloning kind of made illegal? Now there is an interesting concept

Paul, I think you're taking matters to extremes that make little sense. You've effectively accused a manufacturer/s of "stealing" and "copying" designs which is a crazy thing to say.
I seem to recall you're a big fan of Minimax machines. Do you seriously believe that the SCM factory in Italy have never aquired a competitor's product and taken the thing apart? Have never introduced a feature in their product line that already exists or is an improvement on other manufacturer's ideas? I suspect not. It's normal, acceptable and ethical practice to do so in my opinion. After all you can only improve and gain market advantage (through design, manufacture or useage) with a product by having intimate knowledge of the existing products on the market.
Regarding clones, tool wise, there are a few machines in my shop that I would not have been able to purchase if various manufacturers did not make their own less expensive but well made products that appear similar to other brands.

Rgds

Noel

[Stan Welborn]

This is too comical to even discuss. Let's just all go back to caveman days and only one guy has a sharp stick. We've never progressed any further, because nobody wanted to copy caveman Joe. LMAO. This thread is asinine.

[Nancy Laird]

Just out of curiosity,

What company DID invent the combo jointer/planer?

Joe, I don't know what company invented the combo machine, but we owned one (until a few weeks ago) made by Hitachi. It was a monster. We bought it used from the original owner in about 1990 - it originally sold for about $2800, and he had owned it for a number of years. Hitachi is Japanese, so the Europeans aren't the only ones who have manufactured and refined such machines. We got rid of it for two reasons: first, it was LOUD , even with hearing protection. Second, the infeed table had dropped about .05, which was not a big deal and it could have been easily fixed by a shim, but we decided to move to separate machines.

I suspect that anyone looking at the Hitachi, any Euro, and the new Grizzly would be hard-pressed to find any radical differences among them--after all, how many "innovations" can one make to a machine designed to do a specific job--planing and jointing lumber?

Just my 1.98.

Nancy

[Bruce Benjamin]

Paul, while I don't completely disagree with your objections to Papa Grizzly's admissions, your comparison of woodworking machines to literary works really is such a leap that it practically doesn't make sense. There are an infinite number of stories to be written and they all work as long as they are written in a recognized language and with proper grammar so that they can be read. The same can be said to a lessor extent of building designs. But if you want to make a wood working tool to perform a certain function or functions, then there are only a few practical ways to accomplish this. Want to write a crime novel? Without changing existing laws, there are certainly going to be some parts of a novel very similar to another crime novel. Designing a building? Are you telling me that you decided on making a room with 4 walls, a ceiling, and a floor with no outside influence. Brilliant! A planer/jointer has a number of moving parts. Look at two different brands and you're bound to find very close similarities in many of those parts and it's not just coincidence.

As much as it pains me to defend Papa Grizzly in any way, (I'm not a fan at all) he didn't say he took apart the MM machine to copy it. Although I suspect that was at least in part the purpose of taking it apart. I don't think Grizzly is capable of designing anything from scratch. I'd bet anyone would be hard pressed to find a single tool they sell that is unique in any significant way other than possibly how the features are bundled. But from what I got out of his post, he took the MM apart to see the quality. I also doubt that Grizzly is up to the MM quality but that remains to be seen. As somebody else said in this thread, any company will claim that their products are as good as or better than the competition.

In my opinion, taking apart a machine with the intent of copying it as closely as possible is wrong. But taking apart the same machine with the intent of seeing how it works and making improvements on it is less wrong. I'm not really familiar with either the Grizzly or the MM design but I suspect that PG didn't try very hard to make significant improvements to the MM design. But it's not an exact copy either.

Bruce

Why stop there? Lets allow our children to "borrow" ideas from one another. Why not let let literary's greatest works be made better, heck I could simplfy one of John Steinback's novels and make it "better" ....as stated in some arguements here there is a very fine line between innovation and "plagerism". Do not students get thrown out of universities for this? Wasn't there a term somewhere coined as "industrial espionage" ? In my opinion, dismantling someone else's product in order to come up with your own is nothing more that "plagerism" at its finest. Do not confuse "product development" with stealing. Wasn't human cloning kind of made illegal? Now there is an interesting concept

[Dan Lautner]

This Griz machine could be a very important milestone for equipment in the US. If you look at the Minimax website you will see a huge ad for $800 off their 12" j/p. Minimax is now responding to a similar machine at a much lower price. If the Griz machine is a success you better believe a 16" model will be in the works. I would personally love to see a compact sliding tablesaw with a riving knife in the $2500 range. Like it or not we live in a global economy and things will be manufactured wherever the company can maximize profits.

Dan

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Interesting.....so you admitt that you took apart another company's machine and then come out with your own that looks a lot like it....Boy do I have problems with that on so many different levels but then again that is my opinion. I think the true test of any machines worth & quality is dependability over time. The true test of any company is the complete understanding of their product and how to support it for the end user...

This is a very naive statment to me. I praise his honesty in making the statement in the first place. But why would any company start any design from "scratch" when there are well designed and evolved examples to learn from. It's not illegal unless something is patented so no laws were broken. Any company would be very reckless with it's stockholder's money to not learn as much as possible from the competition. Why shouldn't he do it when other much larger companies do it all the time? How do you think the Japanese got so good? They copied our designs and improved on them in every way they could. Now most people regard them as some of the best automobile builders in the world. So with respect I do not agree with your statement at all.

Oh, I almost forgot to add this: I own a MM16 bandsaw and could never get a flat table for it from the company. I had two and neither were flat. And I'm not just talking a little out of flat. To their credit they did offer to pay for a grinding. Good company there but where's the good quality to begin with?

[Glen Gunderson]

I don't really see the issue here. Grizzly bought a Minimax machine and then took it apart to see how it was made. I really don't see the big deal, and I'm sure it happens every day in the manufacturing industry.

If they were violating any patents or laws by doing so then I'm sure Minimax's lawyers would have been on the case (and I'm sure Grizzly's lawyers would ensure that this information wasn't divulged on a woodworkers forum).

Sure you can say "it's ethical if they examine Minimax's machine in order to make a better version, but that's not what Grizzly was doing." Well, I would guess they were taking it apart to see if they could make a machine of similar capabilities more economically. It's up to the consumer to determine if the corners they cut are worth the reduction in price. If it's a piece of junk, people won't buy it. However, if it is much like many of their other tools and is a fairly good machine for the money, I'm sure it will sell quite well to the segment of the marketplace who simply don't have $10,000 to spend on a jointer/planer.


To compare this to creative works is ridiculous, but if you insist, there are multitudes of examples of people who have used older works as a basis for new creations. The only time when this becomes an issue is when someone else owns the copyright to the original and the new version borrows sufficiently to violate that copyright. That obviously isn't the case with Grizzly or else I'm sure the case would already be before the courts.

[Wayne Watling]

I'm a Tecnomax (Minimax) combo owner and as soon as I saw the pic of the J/P I knew it was a knock-off. What is suprising is that a US company is listening and responding to the market place and good for them because if they keep that up they are going to do very well. I hope they do a full 5 function combo because these machines are ideal for a small hobbist shop and as it is the euro machines are way out of the price range for most hobbists.

[Noel Hegan]

I'm a Tecnomax (Minimax) combo owner and as soon as I saw the pic of the J/P I knew it was a knock-off. What is suprising is that a US company is listening and responding to the market place and good for them because if they keep that up they are going to do very well. I hope they do a full 5 function combo because these machines are ideal for a small hobbist shop and as it is the euro machines are way out of the price range for most hobbists.

Wayne, how can the Grizzly be a "knock-off" of the MM? There's at least 20 brands in Europe (including MM) that market such J/Ps or Planer Thicknessers as they are more commonly known in Europe and there's very little difference between them in design or format. Don't know who originally came up with the concept but I'm sure they've been around for at least 50 or 60 years.
I do agree with you that it is good to hear of a company being customer led.

[Christopher Stahl]

Shiraz didn't say anything about opening up an MM to copy it. Heck, I've been inside all my tools looking at their build quality. Just not worth jumping to conclusions.

One thing I will point out, the MM website seems to have plenty of used equipment forsale from other manufactures. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because it was dropped off at the wrong address by accident.

[thomas prevost]

I think the question of papa Griz designing a machine is remote. Most likely a manufacturers rep came to Griz with a machine they would like to have Griz retail. Then Griz research looked at other machines on the market and determined what would be the critical specs the manufacturtere would have to maintain to be of similar quality to that on the market and wrote those spec into the contract.

To give Papa Griz his due. The are not the manufacturers of machinery. But, what he has done over the years is to worked with manufacturers that were using out dated technology and poor raw materials to updgrade them to ISO approved facilities. This puts the manufacturing on par with any Euro machine as far as specs are concerned.

ISO approval is a very costly endvor and difficult to maintain. BUT it is the Euro standard for quality. Most Americans do not undertand ISO standards. Thus, it may be helpful for Papa Giz or some of the Euro contemperaries to educate us.

[Wayne Watling]

Wayne, how can the Grizzly be a "knock-off" of the MM? There's at least 20 brands in Europe (including MM) that market such J/Ps or Planer Thicknessers as they are more commonly known in Europe and there's very little difference between them in design or format. Don't know who originally came up with the concept but I'm sure they've been around for at least 50 or 60 years.
I do agree with you that it is good to hear of a company being customer led.

Noel, I never said it was an MM knock-off.

[Shiraz Balolia]

The MM was not the only European jointer/planer we took apart and examined, and no laws were broken. Like many have said, it is done all the time and by the best of them. I hardly think that MM invented the sliding table saw, the bandsaw and the Jointer/planer.

Personally, I am not a big fan of combination machines. The only reason we brought these on was due to the numerous requests we had from customers to offer a good quality combo machine that did not cost as much as the European machines. The labor cost in a particular country, value of the dollar against certain currencies, the company's idea of what it wants to make for a profit, the channels of trade that the machines move through etc.. all play a part in how much a product is priced. Yes, this machine was developed to compete directly with European makes, so you can be darn sure that we used techniques and components accordingly. The G0634 with the spiral cutterhead is priced aggressively (lower than it should be) to test the waters and I must say that the response to this machine has been great. I don't believe that MM even offers a J/P model with an indexable carbide spiral cutterhead.

[Jay Brewer]

Ive thought about this a little more, and though I dont agree with making a direct copy of another product ( im not saying this is the case here.) almost everything we own is a copy of something. Mini Max, Hammer and Felder only have to worry if this machine is as good or better than theirs, so far they have been pretty good at staying ahead of the imports, only time will tell. At less than half the price of the Mini Max it is compelling, and if it is a good machine I would say its a bargain.

[Paul B. Cresti]

The MM was not the only European jointer/planer we took apart and examined, and no laws were broken. Like many have said, it is done all the time and by the best of them. I hardly think that MM invented the sliding table saw, the bandsaw and the Jointer/planer.

Personally, I am not a big fan of combination machines. The only reason we brought these on was due to the numerous requests we had from customers to offer a good quality combo machine that did not cost as much as the European machines. The labor cost in a particular country, value of the dollar against certain currencies, the company's idea of what it wants to make for a profit, the channels of trade that the machines move through etc.. all play a part in how much a product is priced. Yes, this machine was developed to compete directly with European makes, so you can be darn sure that we used techniques and components accordingly. The G0634 with the spiral cutterhead is priced aggressively (lower than it should be) to test the waters and I must say that the response to this machine has been great. I don't believe that MM even offers a J/P model with an indexable carbide spiral cutterhead.

I am so glad that it is socially acceptable to profit on other people's designs. Also glad it is agreeable to so many to go to third world countries to produce products to undercut the countries that do pay and treat their employees with respect....oh but then again jobs are provided for people in this country right???

So go ahead and keep "inventing" and continuing that quest to bring the good people of this country good machines at fair prices....I applaud the mission. Oh forgot this is all in the name of furthering the technology of woodworking, yea thats right the "improvements" on these machines are helping the whole of mankind. Thank God we have people like this in this world otherwise the woodworking industry would be at a stand still and still using water powered mills.

Yes these "new" machines that so happen to "look" a lot like other brands, minus the color pallete, will be true earth shattering innovations in the industry. They will walk on water and process wood with accuracy and precision of the likes never known by man...because as the other people have said in reply to my posts this is all done in the advancement of technology.

Now lets see where in this thread have I made any personal attacks on anyone...glad no one else has done that. So I guess I will go back into my cave and continue to believe that it is not ethical to profit on other peoples work or designs. Heck I may never be rich monetarily but I will be rich where it matters. I will continue to work hard, teach my children right from wrong and be proud knowing that everything I achieve in life will be by my own efforts...hey I have this club on my head do you want it?