Thread: price vs quality

Why do we chose to find a thousand reasons to not do some thing and not try to find a thousand to do it??? :confused:

Suppose it comes from the attitude "cynic" and "faeces agitator" - comes with the nature of this country - no insult intended DaveInOz

The current mentality of building cheap and disposing of it is the very reason that land fills are filling exponentially - Supermarkets are a classic - how many of you have a heap of reusable bags somewhere but wind up rebuying when you get there coz you left them somewhere else that's not recycling , that's money driven - they're smarter than you and I
:mad: :mad:

OK I'm on the soap box again but I've done it too

So it's not just the quality but the responsibility of manufacturers and users that needs to be addressed

Jamie

OK, all joking aside,

I didn't say we were running out of land fill space, I just don't like adding to the pile that's there.

examples are:

I use pallet timber to do woodworking, I am re-learning all my long lost knowledge about joins tools atc..

I recently baught a mulcher to turn prunings into mulch,

I had fight with council when we first moved into the area as there were no bins for recycling of plastics/glass/aluminium (I've never seen glass and ali turn to methane)

I choose not to have plastic bags for things that have got packaging already, I have a plastic box in my car for carrying my groceries in.

I'm no greenie by any strech of the imagination, I just don't like throwing things away because it's easier than repairing them. So I buy tools which I believe can be repaired economicaly (to my standard) rather then buy something use it once and give it the heave.

If people are comfortable with leaving a pile of sh** for their kids to cope with in the future so be it.

BTW it's getting crowded on the soap box...

Himzo.

BTW it's getting crowded on the soap box...

I hope it is a recycled soap box.

About two months ago my old Black and Decker drill died (probably of abuse and old age) so off to Mitre Ten I went credit card in hand. For $25 or $30 I could have bought a drill or two or three but I happened to pick up a $15O drill just to see. The immediate impression was that it felt a lot better made and as I happened to be able to afford it I bought it. In use it is way ahead of any of the cheaper ones I have used. At low speeds especially it has a lot of grunt and I am glad I bought it. But against that, I have built a few steel framed sheds. One I built years ago with a cheap B&D drill that was already old when I got to it. We used it severely over an extended period and it was great. But in general I think that you do get what you pay for. I use a MBS 300 saw at work with a 3 phase 5 HP motor. It is far and away a better proposition than a cheaper table saw (but at a much higher price).

There have been a couple of folks say what I also think. The tool itself is adequate for light work. But the batteries a total garbage. Even if you only need the tool everyonce in awhile the batteries don't last even with little or no use. Try looking for some second hand gear. It's not hard to tell if the the tools are still in good nic and the price can be very good.

My experience with power tools... You get waht you pay for.

An example. I was setting out to build a gable roof pergola using a stack of old jarrah timber I had left over after renovating the house some years back. The timber was rough sawn and nicely seasoned and I wanted to give it a good finish before painting it. I already had a Makita planer which is an extra good tool. I also had a DeWalt 9.6V cordless hammer drill which cost an arm and a leg about 8 years ago but when I was up a ladder I dropped it and bent the shaft so it was a bin job. I decided I would get one of the cheapie Ryobi battery drills with 2 batteries for around $90 and a cheapie Ryobi belt sander for about $70 and when the pergola was finished I reckoned that the Ryobi's would be too but since I didn't plan to building anything in the future this would be the way to go.

Well, the drill batteries went flat in about 15 minutes and the charger supplied with it was a heap of junk. All in all it had no guts and was a waste of money. Being an electronics engineer I pulled the battery pack apart and found the Ni-Cd's were cheap Chinese junk so it was no wonder they would hold a charge. The charger circuitry was also crap and wasn't capable od doing what was intended. I had a far worse experience with the sander however. After using it on and off for about a week sanding long jarrah beams which I had planed with the Makita, the sander slowed markedly and sparks issued forth prolifically from the armature brushes. I had to drive about 50km round trip to get it replaced at the Ryobi warranty centre as I wanted to continue working. The next one didn't last a week so back it went and sander number 3 was tried. That lasted less than a week also and this time I decided to do some research on Ryobi, a brand I had previously had good experiences with. In the years before 1999 Ryobi was Japanese and they made a general hobby line of tools as well as a semi-pro Tradeline series which were blue or turquoise green in colour. Both my brother and myself have used the Tradeline stuff over the years and find they were extra good value tools. When Ryobi stopped making power tools they sold the brand name to Tehtronic Industries group in Hong Kong and all future Ryobi stuff was made in China. To cut a long story short I emailed Techtronic in HK and told them what I thought of their products (both drill and sander). Next day the local state manager phoned and said he wanted to call on me and discuss the situation. I told him I wanted to get a full refund on the sander so I could put it towards a Makita and I also told him about the drill. When he landed on my doorstep he had a brand new CID1202V (semi pro model) with him which he swapped for the dud drill. Now this was a much better made tool and had real Sanyo re-chargeable batteries however the charger was still crap. The screwdriver ratchet clutch also had problems but I could live with that. On setting 21 it would ratchet at quite high torque but if you need to go to setting 22 it would not ratchet no matter what load it was under. The drill would stall before it would ratchet at 22. This info was fed back to TTI in HK and hopefully they rectified it on later models. I suspect it was because they used the same clutch mechanism on all the models from 12V up to 18V and this was why the 22 setting wouldn't ratchet for the 12V model. It did have plenty of guts and would go for hours under load before the battery became flat.

I rectified the charger problem by cutting the plastic battery receptacle out of the Ryobi charger case and aralditing it into my old DeWalt charger case which was a far superior design and was basically a universal job which could charge anything from 7.2V - 14.4V batteries and it didn't use a heavy power transformer.

I wouldn't buy anything less than the Ryobi semi-pro line of tools in future and would probably opt for the well known Makita stuff.

If you read this article http://www.ebuild.com/guide/resource...4&catCode=1021 you will see what other brands TTI manufacture so you can perhaps make a determination before buying anything.

Does a quality brand name mean a quality machine.

I noticed my new DeWalt 18v cordless is made in Mexico. By out sourcing their manafacturing to poorer countries, are they saving on quality as will as the cast price to make the machine.



Doc

Originally Posted by MathewA

The tool itself is adequate for light work. But the batteries a total garbage. Even if you only need the tool everyonce in awhile the batteries don't last even with little or no use.

My experience with cheapies has not been so bad. I have 4 rechargeable drills (explained further below).

First is an old Makita 7.2 volt which has been great. Good torque considering low voltage and good work output per charge. Not suitable for screwdriving as it is too fast (doesn't have the variable speed trigger that even cheapies now have). Batteries keep their charge for months).

Second is an 18 volt Arlec - cost about $40. When freshly charged it has heaps of torque and reasonable work output per charge. Good for use as a screwdriver but I hate the thing. The red plastic is coated with a protective film that has peeled off in places and become grubby all over. Tried to dissolve it off but started to dissolve the whole case so now I just put up with the ugliness. I ruined the batteries due to poor technique - more on that below.

The other two are 12 volt XU1 cheapies - $18 each from Bunnies. When I bought the first one I liked it so much I went back and bought another. The thing I like most is their smoothness - no vibration at all. Fair torque and reasonable work output per charge. What more could you ask for $18. - I ruined the batteries on one - entirely my own fault - but the other keeps its charge very well.

Now to the point of this post - the batteries: What you should do when you first use the tool is charge it up fully and then use it hard until discharged. Then do the same again, preferably a few times in succession. After that the batteries should hold their charge well and have good output per charge. The worst thing you can do is charge it up the first time and not use it. I did this with the Arlec and one of the XU1's because I was interrupted and had to put off the job till the following weekend - worse still the same happened the next weekend. With some hard use I am gradually rehabilitating them.

So why do I need 4 drills? Well, I do a lot of screwing (in wood of course) and with one drill it is a pain in the A having to change bits all the time - slows you down no end. So now I have one drill set up with a starter size drill bit, one with final size drill bit, one with countersink bit and one with screwdriver bit. Its amazing how much this speeds up progress on larger jobs.

Now drilling and fastening a series of screws is just a matter of rrrrr, RRRRR, BZZZZ, RRRRBlatt, rrrrr, RRRRR, BZZZZ, RRRRBlatt, etc, etc.

Of course you could go rrrrr, rrrrr, RRRRR, RRRRR, BZZZZ, BZZZZ, RRRRBlatt, RRRRBlatt etc, etc, but I prefer to go rrrrr, RRRRR, BZZZZ, RRRRBlatt, etc.

regards,
Coldamus

I like the big hole idea but not in Port Macquarie. It'll play havoc with my property values.
South Australia has so many large holes already we can just stretch one of them and dump the stuff there. There's some great land at Emu Field and Maralinga that nobody will want to build a house on for a few thousand years.

Had to pull my Makita orbital sander apart today as the bushes have worn out. I`ve had it 12 months and worked its guts out. You can straight away tell what you pay for in a quality tool buy how it is made and the quality of the internal parts. Pull a cheap tool apart and compare them and there is no comparison, short cuts on the motor etc etc.

Use to buy cheap power tools but after having high quality power tools worth just saving and spending the extra money and every time you go to use them your know they will see the job through.

regards Goldy

Originally Posted by Coldamus

My experience with cheapies has not been so bad. I have 4 rechargeable drills (explained further below).

snip

Now to the point of this post - the batteries: What you should do when you first use the tool is charge it up fully and then use it hard until discharged. Then do the same again, preferably a few times in succession. After that the batteries should hold their charge well and have good output per charge. The worst thing you can do is charge it up the first time and not use it. I did this with the Arlec and one of the XU1's because I was interrupted and had to put off the job till the following weekend - worse still the same happened the next weekend. With some hard use I am gradually rehabilitating them.

snip

regards,
Coldamus

It isn't quite that simple unfortunately. The old story about "memory" effect really only applies to Ni-cd (Nickel Cadmium) batteries but the trend these days is to use Ni-Mh (Nickel Metal-hydride) which don't exhibit this effect. Even with Ni-cd's the problem really comes down to the fact that every cell in the series string may not be at the same level of charge at the commencement of charge, and because the charger cuts off when it reaches its nominal terminal voltage plus some nominal top up charge over and above this figure, some cells in the string may still not be fully charged. When the tool is used the battery capacity may not be fully achieved and it will go flat ahead of the period normally expected because one or two cells in the string discharge earlier than the others. In order to ensure that all cells in the string are nearly at the same starting point before a charge begins, the battery should first be fully discharged so that respective cell voltages are all about 0.9 - 1.0V. However, because you can only do a bulk discharge of all cells simultaneously, and you don't want to discharge them below about 0.9V, there is no way to ensure that each cell is precisely at this voltage. All one can do is carry out a bulk discharge based on the number of cells multiplied by 0.9. In the case of a 12V battery the nominal fully charged voltage of each cell is 1.2V so there are 10 cells in all. 10 x 0.9 = 9V so you discharge the battery into a load until the voltage reads 9V before commencing a normal charge. Needless to say, becaue the discharge cycle takes some time to do reliably, and the makers of the tools don't think it is necessary to do so, the chargers they supply don't have a discharge-before-charge function. Where the cells are of known good quality with predictable and stable characteristics, and so far only the Japanese made ones fill the bill in this regard, then the discharge cycle can be dispensed with. However, over the lifetime of the battery it is normal for the individual cell characteristics to drift apart more widely and it is a good practice to do a periodic full discharge so that the average cell voltage is brought down to 0.9V under load.

In my experience with rechargeable batteries the Chinese made ones are inferior and just can't provide reliable service. As more of the recognised Japanese battery makers move their operations to China, the junk batteries will become fewer.

Originally Posted by bitingmidge

Yep,

It's S-I-L's birthday next week, and we have tucked away a GMC kit comprising 1/2" Hammer drill, 100mm angle grinder, jig saw and orbital sander, (includes 10 grinding discs, a few drill bits and saw blades and a couple of sheet of sandpaper) so the bit's ....................
P

BLOODY GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!

I had never thought of buying my sister-in-law anything like that!

man, my brother will be pleased!

Two fathers days ago I walked into Bunnings to purchase a cheap 240V electric drill for a specific purpose, that being, to be permanently attached to a jig and have a rotary sanding pad attached.

I actually asked the store person what was the cheapest small drill available and was directed to a pile of drills on a table, not even in boxes. The cost was $27.95 and as I was about to walk out I noticed on the adjoing table a pile of near identical, but 12V cordless drills, for the same price, both drills were XU1's. Not having a cordless drill, I thought with that price, I would try one.

I have been extremely pleased with both of them and it was these purchases that changed my outlook on cheap products for a specific job.

As it's turned out the XU1 12V job, has been worked reasonably hard and has performed faultlessly. It's a pleasure to use and seems to work on a single charge forever.

One of my brothers who is an upholsterer has a brace of cordless drills that cost him last year, $450 each. He hammers them, they apparently last about 3 years and then start to die. As an excercise, he tried my XU1 cordless job just to see how it would take his workload, it lasted about 15 minutes before he put it down, it couldn't handle the torque requirements of his work, yet, for my purposes, it's brilliant!

Mick.

Im still waiting for someone to invent handyman wood and steel so I can buy cheap handyman tools and save myself a fortune.

Me2