Vostpk Factory Tour

[HectorLooi]

An interesting tour of the Vostok factory.

The watches are assembled without gloves! 

When you get a brand new Vostok, you better do a thorough clean.

[Kalanag]

Wow! What an incredible contrast to the promotional videos of Swiss manufacturers!

[grsnovi]

I wonder what the incident rate is on lost fingers?

[nickelsilver]

2 hours ago, grsnovi said:

I wonder what the incident rate is on lost fingers?

Even in Russia I would imagine there's a double switch so unless one has been disabled no danger.

[grsnovi]

1 hour ago, nickelsilver said:

no danger

I can say that those hand-operated presses wouldn't be allowed in the USA with all of the OSHA safety regulations. Too exposed.

[nickelsilver]

50 minutes ago, grsnovi said:

I can say that those hand-operated presses wouldn't be allowed in the USA with all of the OSHA safety regulations. Too exposed.

Yes, on a machinist forum I frequent someone wanted to sell some small presses and there was a unanimous cry "if they were made after 19xx they're scrap". Presses scare the bejezus out of me.

[MechanicMike]

they can and are allowed-you'd be surprised at how many are out there that do still exist and run. I know cuz I've worked on lots of them for years. most if not all have been retrofitted and upgraded with dead man switches and light curtains for safety, from the small 1 tons all the way up to the heavy hitters like the 400 ton that have foundations and pilings that go as deep as 40 ft. if you get anywhere near the business end of the press and it shuts it down in less than what it takes to blink an eye. they're fascinating to watch, much less fun to work on tho...this is interesting to see that they still use ancient presses in their facility. for further reading look up the history of Deuber-Hampden American pocketwatches and where the whole plant and several of its technicians went to in 1921...

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, grsnovi said:

I can say that those hand-operated presses wouldn't be allowed in the USA with all of the OSHA safety regulations. Too exposed.

Safety regulations in Russia !  where the people are a commodity.

[nickelsilver]

I remember reading on the machinist forum about a guy carrying out a punch and die set, setting it in someone's trunk, and the set slamming closed as he set it in. There was a mention of "popping grapes" which horrified me but apparently the bloke made a full recovery. I'm eternally terrified of punch sets.

[HectorLooi]

What amazes me is there was absolutely no attempt to "sanitize" or hide anything. The setup looks like it was from the '80s. Except for the part where they were using what looks like China made timegraphers.

I can't wait to see the insides of a Chinese watch factory.

[RichardHarris123]

4 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

What amazes me is there was absolutely no attempt to "sanitize" or hide anything. The setup looks like it was from the '80s. Except for the part where they were using what looks like China made timegraphers.

I can't wait to see the insides of a Chinese watch factory.

Most of the set up looked way older than the eighties to me.  Does anyone have any idea how old some of the machines are?

[Neverenoughwatches]

6 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

I remember reading on the machinist forum about a guy carrying out a punch and die set, setting it in someone's trunk, and the set slamming closed as he set it in. There was a mention of "popping grapes" which horrified me but apparently the bloke made a full recovery. I'm eternally terrified of punch sets.

[dadistic]

Way back when the super for my building was a punch press operator during the day. He was missing several fingers.

No doubt operators under time pressure would disable the safety manacles on the press, they were uncomfortable and interfered with loading the press.

Modern optical fences are much better.

[spectre6000]

I watched the Vostok video. YouTube figured I liked it, and served me up this one of the Raketa factory this morning:

If you're not hip to the tech, you can turn on closed captions, and under settings have it auto-translate to whatever language. It's a bit hit or miss, and started out good, but toward the end of the video (I assume when things started getting technical) it pretty much fell apart into an unintelligible word salad.

The first half looks to be just hanging out in the gift shop, but they do ultimately show the actual manufacturing. Very different from Vostok. Vostok is much bigger, but looks like ancient tools being kept alive by accident. Raketa looks much more like what I would expect a Russian watch manufacturer to look like; old tools, but reasonably well maintained. If I were to buy a new Russian watch today, I'd definitely be looking at a Raketa over a Vostok.

[MechanicMike]

On 6/27/2022 at 7:43 PM, nickelsilver said:

set slamming closed as he set it in. There was a mention of "popping grapes"

worked with a guy in a huge mfg. facility that included a punch press dept. . one of the operators was missing his left hand and forearm to just below his elbow. still working on the presses 30+ years.