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Wasn't it possible/cheaper to make up a new base plate which fitted?.

Fault finding IS fun, as long as it's Some body else's fault.

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It's nice to know that a British importer stands behind their products, well done Warco.

 By the way, if you make a note of the number on the belt, you can get a replacement easily.

Edited By old mart on 14/06/2019 21:15:57

I don’t like bang good, for a very good reason – they sell cheap stuff but have no customer service when the goods are really rubbish (which they often are?)

Why do you dislike Warco?

Warco have been in business for a long time. Not all that they sell is faultless, but they are willing to try to right matters if there is a problem, even to replacing complete machines.

Statistical Quality Control, as per Deeming, depends up on how many standard deviations you want your product to fall within. Even if you go for 3 standard deviations, which is about the best that you can get, there can still be a small percentage falling outside the specification.

If you elect to hand build every unit, you may well get even bigger differences from item to item

Steam locomotives were hand built by craftsmen, but unless it was G W R, direct interchangeability of parts was nigh on impossible.

You can make any machine virtually perfect, if you resort to such methods, but they are slow, and therefore costly, and the parts are likely to be unique to that machine.

The skill is in design, and manufacture, such that almost 100% of machines meet the specification. You will always get a small percentage that fall at the ends of the Gaussian distribution, (Bell Curve ). Hopefully, Inspection will spot the batches that do not comply and reject them before assembly.

With our hobby facilities, we cannot hope, nor wish, to produce thousands of interchangeable parts and consistent complete assemblies..

The above may be a difficult concept to grasp if you have no experience of high volume production. But producing large numbers of complicated machines that meet specification depends upon a variety of skills and disciplne. NO it is meant to be singular (BS 5750 and it's succesor, ISO 9000, for instance )

We've all heard of Friday afternoon cars, haven't we? Sadly, some may have experienced them. They are ones where the process failed. Think of the number of components in the modern car, and wonder that so many cars work so well, for so long. Japanese cars showed, via an American's methods, and still do, the way for other manufacturers.

Mass production lives on "Fitness for Purpose", so that most do what they are intended to do.

Howard

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Haggerleases,

You cannot expect to drink Premier Cru Champagne if you only pay the price for a pint of beer.

I spent a lot of my life in Quality and Development, but accept that most of the time you get what you pay for.

I do not expect to find high quality veneer and a cocktail bar in my Toyota Aygo. If I MUST have those, I have to pay for a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley.

Quality costs!

The time devoted to Design, Manufacture, Inspection,Assembly, Adjustment and the material has to paid for, as well as the labour.t..

So if we pay £600 for a Far Eastern lathe, it is unrealistic to expect it to be, and to behave like a £20,000 Industrial machine. The materials will be cheaper, and It will not be as well finished,, or adjusted as the Industrial machine. You cannot get those features for peanuts. The industrial machine is expected to work to tighter tolerance, almost 24/7.

A machine used purely for a hobby, is unlikely to be worked hard, for 40 hours a week, every week.

It sounds as if you joined the hobby too late to have any dealings with the late, and much lamented, John Stevenson. He would have put his comments much more forcibly, and offended you, despite them being accurate.

My Instructors, at Rolls-Royce told me, early on, after I had had a disaster, "The man who never made a mistake; never made anything". We are all human, and from time to we all make mistakes.. It may be annoying, at least, but if you cannot achieve perfection, it is unrealistic to expect it of everyone else.

Howardi

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No flak from me, but some confusion. When I was researching a first lathe purchase (13-14 years ago I think) there was a lot of stuff on t'internet about Far Eastern machines being a 'kit of parts'. I think it is generally accepted that things have moved on since then and that the manufacturers have responded by improving quality control. In your comment about the OP's particular and unusual problem you seem to have characterised the whole machine as 'a pile of crap' on the basis of the fault. However Warco acknowledged the problem and responded promptly with a replacement and the problem is resolved. It shouldn't have happened. But…

Scared by the reputation of far Eastern machines I bought a Proxxon PD400 which has about the same capacity /weight as a Far Eastern minilathe. About four times the price (around 2500 including 4-jaw and steadies) at the time, but I was paying for out-of the-box European (Austrian) quality. Couldn't get the gib on the cross slide right, I put it down to stupidity /inexperience, Eventually I tracked it down to a bent cross-slide feed screw. Proxxon's UK agent promptly replaced it with another bent screw, then another. I gave up and made a straight one myself. Since when it's been a lovely (if overpriced) little lathe. The rest of it is fine. So it isn't just Far Eastern manufacturers who make mistakes.

My 'biggest ticket' workshop purchase so far has been a 3000 GBP 12×36 Far Eastern gear head lathe – it's as accurate as the Proxxon I am grieved to say. But much bigger! Over the years I have pushed much more than that into the Far Eastern economy by buying low ticket items I suspect.

I'm confused because I don't understand if your reluctance to hit 'buy' is because you  think you'll get a 'pile of crap' from Warco or others (unlikely) or you have difficulties with supporting the economy of a country with a political system which you don't like. In the latter case it's possibly not an appropriate subject for this forum.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 16/06/2019 02:15:44

Edited By Robin Graham on 16/06/2019 02:19:05