Comment by MisterTea

As someone who grew up in a machine and wood working shop and now builds, repairs and retrofits machinery, I can say that 50 years old is nothing and absolutely fine.

> The thing is, those 50 yr old machine tools might be still good, but the more recent CNC machines are much more efficient, and require way less manual dexterity to use (say, compared to a lathe).

I assume you are referring to manual operated machinery vs CNC machinery? Otherwise there is little to no efficiency gained from a new CNC machine. I've run both and the setup of a CNC for simple jobs that can be done on a manual isn't worth the effort. CNC's really shine at high production and very complex parts.

> The fact that machines that are 50 yrs old are still in operation is quite a feat but also an indication that the production methods remained static

If the requirements haven't changed, e.g. machining flanges that meet ASME B16.5, and the production methods are already optimized, why even bring this up?

> (of course, if the production machines are good enough already, then investment into new machines don't bring in new profits).

Right. If the specs didn't change then why bother investing in pointless upgrades?

The ONLY reason companies toss out machinery: it's no longer useful to the company, or so hopelessly broken that it cant be fixed. And there is very little that can render a machine scrap unless something catastrophic happened. And there is very little preventing old machinery from being retrofitted with new controls.