"Richard Tomkins" wrote in message
s.com...
I worked for Digital Equipment Computers.

In the late nineties, we moved a board manufacturing operation from
Albuquerque New Mexico to Mexico. Some bright shining star asshole said it
would be cheaper to make PC boards south of the border, after all NAFTA
took
care of any problems with duties.

Well, it took a long time to make it happen, but eventually the whole
operation was moved and the New Mexico facility closed and all the people
there off to find other employment.

After about a year of trying to make it work out, having already spent a
year getting things started, it turned out that work ethic, cultural
differences, payola, bribes, graft, blackmail and technical incompetence
stated to take it's toll on a our quality levels.

We couldn't move the stuff back to New Mexico, we had to move it all to
Kanata, Canada to make our PC boards and bring the quality back up.

When the highly sophisticated automated machinery (pick and pace),
imported
from Japan at great cost was brought into our plant, every machine had
it's
ground wires removed and most of the safeties were gone too.

I guess Mexico does not have a national electrical standard that the
government or general population could give a **** about.

If you could get the electrical up to your building and then do all the
internal stuff yourself, then you could figure a ground into the circuit
by
sticking a long, 12 foot rod into the ground.




i have personally seen some really frightening wiring in Mexico. stuff like
exposed meter sockets at about shoulder hight one the front of a building by
a sidewalk.

the fancy tourist hotels seemed to be OK. the equipment i brought all
worked fine but i had a battery backup mixer just in case.