GHETTOBLASTER » 21 Sep 2023, 10:44 am » wrote: ↑
So back in the USSR nobody privately owned a full service machine shop...right...?
It's my understanding there were state run hobby centers and state run vocational machine shops that the public could use under strict supervision.
Once the USSR dissolved......was all of this machinery and equipment "looted" by the public and turned into basement operations...?
I know a local guy who designed a model engine after the USSR folded.
He had connections with the world class competitors in Russia and so he was introduced to several single operation shops in Russia that were privately owned.
So he had 1 guy in 1 town making the crankshafts, another guy making the crankcases in another city, another the pistons and cylinder liners, etc.
No one single person ever saw a completely assembled engine...it was up to my friend to hand fit the engines himself from bins full of the parts.
The engines sold very well for a few years until someone in Russia figured out what was going on. The guy in Russia "cloned" this new engine that my friend was selling and this Evil Russian hired all the individual machinists who already knew how to make all of the parts blindfolded.
The new engine company was named NORVEL and they became very big in the 1990s.
They used a military grade anodizing in aluminum cyclinders that the aluminum piston could be fit tightly to without wear. The aluminum cylinder and aluminum piston grow at the same rate and of course this makes the engine as light as possible and much cheaper to produce than having a brass liner with hard chrome on the wear surface.
Norvel eventually got side tracked with more lucrative government contracts [military I assume] and about this time electric motor powered planes were taking over the internal combustion engine market anyway.
Here's another really popular product that is made in Russia and Ukraine...ready to fly conbat planes for lazy Americans who buy these by the dozens...
Магазин моделей (yuvenko-combat.com)
https://youtu.be/r4K7LG7X_Q4?si=x9OtbgRTYOtW4yU_