What Did You Do Today (2016)

I spent the day on here waiting for the delivery of a replacement chuck from one of our suppliers. I'm not going to mention any names (they know who they are if they monitor the Forum). The faulty chuck should never have passed even a casual visual inspection, never mind a final inspection after manufacture/assembly, which must have been done by hand.

There was no argument about the fault and a replacement was swiftly sent by return, following return of the faulty one, carriage paid. But, how do I cost up the inconvenience of taking the faulty one to the post-office for return and then having to wait in again for another delivery?

This just reinforces my belief that we, the end users, are being used as final quality inspectors. Some will accept the quality offered, others will not.

I appreciate that margins are tight in our marketplace but obvious visible faults should have no place.

Phil

Edited By CotswoldsPhil on 13/01/2016 20:56:29

Did you have to pay the return postage for the faulty chuck?

No the supplier provided a return label.

Phil

Edited By CotswoldsPhil on 13/01/2016 20:57:10

That's good, they don't all.

I had a fair old argument with one eBay seller over a returned faulty item. Got my original PayPal payment (goods and postage) back but had to pay to return the item myself. After drawn out "discussions" and getting nowhere with the seller, eBay themselves to their credit, refunded my return postage.

When you look at one item, that seems reasonable enough.

Now imagine a company that is shipping dozens or hundreds of items every day, each of which would require a different, if simple, inspection. And bear in mind engineering items like chucks are often carefully wrapped in antirust paper etc. and would need equal care in unpacking and repacking.

It takes the same amount of time to unpack and check a batch of 100 chucks in one go or one at a time.

To reduce returns by a pretty small percentage, prices would have to rise by a significantly higher percentage.

And most hobby customers put price above every other consideration when purchasing.

I assume it wasn't a TOS or Pratt Burnerd chuck, and that you didn't pay a TOS or Pratt Bernerd type price?

It's really not reasonable to expect companies to check goods on anything other than a sample basis AND have low prices. You can't have both.

Neil

Neil,

I'm not saying that suppliers should carry out an inspection, they select manufacturers according to their criteria for acceptable quality levels. The problem (in this case) lies with the manufacturer. Basic manufacturing quality control should not have allowed this chuck (part) to even get to finishing/packing. The chuck is from a perceived premium brand who make a point of quality control as an attribute of the company.

I accept that some faults will filter through the supply chain and our suppliers generally sort them out; in this case very well, but this fault was so obvious it was almost beyond a joke.

Regards

Phil

Edited By CotswoldsPhil on 13/01/2016 22:22:00

The same can happen with what some term better brands, about 5 years ago I ordered and received a better brand chuck, it was 80mm diam 3jSC and cost £125, on inspection the jaw numbers didn't match the chuck number, when checked a ground rod for TIR it was way out of spec. To be fair to the supplier they did pay the return postage and provide a replacement that came within the chucks spec.

It is always an inconvenience when things go wrong but usually the well known ME suppliers will put things right.

Emgee

Phil,

Happens to everyone at some point irrespective of brand or quality.

Few years ago I bought a Bison 12" three jaw chuck, one of the premium brand and believe me it wasn't cheap, I could have bought a hobby lathe or mill for the price.

One year and a day and it sheared three teeth off one jaw, right in the middle ? Could have understood it at one end being tightened with not all the teeth in mesh but how can you shear 3 teeth off in the middle.

Got onto Bison and complained and asked what they were going to do about it. Told nothing, they were not interested so then changed tack and asked if they would meet me on a set of replacement jaws.

Basically told 'still not interested , go away '

Last Bison anything I buy, sooner buy from overseas so that these bastards go to the wall. In fact all replacement chucks are TOS.

I replace the chucks on the two most used lathes every two to three years because of the use they get. It's not that they are worn out, just worn a bit and if they are good it means the soft jaws last 5 times as long and are more accurate.

John,

I think I'm trying to make a general point:

Our suppliers generally do a good job of replacing faulty items found on receipt, as shown by the numerous posts on here.

Not sure how any guarantee might work, as in your case. I once had a washing machine (premium brand) that died in month 13 - supplier/manufacturer - not interested at all.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated case for me, within the last 2 weeks; I've had, from different suppliers, a damaged centre in a RT tail-stock (poor packing), a faulty Indexing Kit for the ubiquitous 4" Rotary table and now 8 "Dixon" type QCTH's which don't seem to relate to any specification at all, even within the same supplier, see other post "QCTH a Couple of Questions".

The tail-stock was replaced without question and I decided to investigate the faulty Indexing kit:

Once assembled on the RT, the plunger would not reach the plate, the plunger is held in the arm with a grub-screw but the plunger was stuck-fast part way into its location hole and it was clear to see that the end of the plunger had been beaten with a hammer, most likely to "help" the plunger into some sort of position.

Thinking that I'm likely to get the same if replaced; I set to and reduced the diameter of the plunger housing so that it was a slip-fit in the hole. Success and no need to wait in again for a replacement.

Neil, you suggest that prices would rise if better quality control was implemented. Manufacturing inspection (in-process and final) still costs much the same.

If manufacturing staff had the authority / training to reject faulty parts at the earliest opportunity, savings could be made at next to no cost.

Fact: It costs more to produce scrap than fit-for-purpose items:-

1) Wasted raw material
2) Wasted machine time
3) Wasted energy
4) Wasted packaging and time
5) Wasted storage and transport
6) Wasted picking and packing for sale
7) Wasted delivery costs
8) Lost of confidence by customer receiving faulty goods (very hard to recover, if at all, as in John's case with the chuck)
9) Potential loss of Life-Time-Value of Customer (total in John's case)
10) Cost of Customer Service time sorting out the problem
11) Cost of return to supplier
12) Cost of rejection inspection
13) Cost of replacement item
14) Cost of hiring a skip for waste disposal

Yes, I know I'm hi$$ing in the wind; but I'm off to the workshop now its had chance to warm up.

I've got one more QCTH to linish so that it fits my tool-post - the process might be a candidate for Bodger's Lodge!

Then I can sort the RT fixings for my new shiny chuck.

Regards

Phil

Edited By CotswoldsPhil on 14/01/2016 13:40:09

When I worked in Engineering ,we had an inspector on our bay day and night. His job was to check the job and make sure that partsd were within tolerance. Our job was to get one past the inspector and then get the rest of the batch rushed off before he came round checking again as the pre war machinery wandered in and out of tolerance. Everything seemed to work OK though and we mourn the passing of British engineering. If we insist on buying far eastern products we get what we pay for.

Being at the other end of such an incident is no fun either.

I remember a firm I worked for shipped out a damaged high value traceable item which had got through all inspection. A storeman, as usual, at the customer spotted the defect and there was all hell to play. After the dust had settled the customer allowed us, myself, a service engineer, a manufacturing engineer who had retired and an inspector who had been moved to another department, to enter his stores and inspect 500 of these items. There were three stores scattered around England and it took days. Every item we inspected was satisfactory.

JA

Edited By JA on 14/01/2016 16:07:56

Perhaps others have experienced what we have today as TalkTalk decided to do an upgrade to its hardware in some of the exchanges, no notice of loss of phones etc, we did have a reduced speed internet which went off as well early this morning.

Being a member of Talktalk's Members Forum I let rip when I could get through to them on the net. Some of the excuses were remarkable as no one had a clue what was happening. I have only found out in the last hour what it was all about.

Clive

Edited By daveb on 14/01/2016 17:06:30

Some of the problem with quality was due to the move to quality assurance rather than inspection,where the supplier has to assure the customer that all his processes are checked and monitored,this was to save cost by reducing inspection costs at the customer end. All sounds good but does not pick up certain lack of controls at a supplier,once had a case where M2 and M3 screws and threads in ali alloy parts were stripping ,the threads in the ali were found to be good,the screws were directed to inspection at least twice no problem,was found by statistical sampling, Problem still existed so I checked batch of ali parts all ok then checked the line screw stock,2000 screws,inspected every one about a dozen were well undersize, supplier called in ,result, well the screws were stainless steel and superfine finished by electro polishing, someone at the supplier had cleaned out the electro polishing tanks and found screws in the bottom of the tank which the operator thought had missed the mesh baskets and put them through the process again and some judging by their size went through at least twice oh dear. My manager just could understand how I could sit down and check 2000 tiny screws, all I said was that just occasionally quality assurance and sampling does not work. If there is a problem with anything a supplier should own up and replace anything provided it is their process at fault,unfortunately ,nowadays their are a lot of scammers just trying it on.

Inspection does not always work. A lathe turner had to produce a batch of twenty 2" or so tubes with a 1/16pitch thread. All were finished and inspected using thread rods and went to the main factory where they were inspected again. Then they went out to the subcontract grinders, came back and passed final inspection and were sent to the customer. They came back, the turner had cut a two start thread and no one spotted it until the customer could not assemble it.

Another company I worked at got rid of all the inspection staff and we had to do self inspection. There were various problems, one of which was a batch of 50 shafts ground to a fraction of a thou tolerance. All were exactly 10 thou undersize.

When the company ran out of work they asked the parent aerospace company for work. No chance, we did not have an inspection department.

At many placesI worked it was not unusual to sit around for 4 or 5 hours waiting for the inspection department.

A friend in Salisbury ended up taking his case to court when his washing machine failed after a couple of years. The judge agreed that it should have been good for at least 5 or more years and awarded him the case. It was a bit of hassle, but worth it in the end as he did not end up out of pocket (just lost his time on it).

Steve

Hi Steve,

Problem is with washing piling up from a young family, priority is skewed to getting access to a working machine.

Regards

Phil

Edited By CotswoldsPhil on 14/01/2016 19:58:20

Bought a washing machine produced by a well respected German manufacturer. Great machine except it occasionally refused to spin efficiently with a light load. Retailer said the machine was fault free and 'every one knew modern machines contain an out of balance sensor to stop the dance across the floor of old' and in a polity way told me to get stuffed and make sure I had a full load before use.

Emailed the manufacturer and asked if this specific machine contained such a device and why. They confirmed it did and give the same explanation. Next email asked what would happen with a light load. Reply explained the machine would not spin efficiently. Asked how this could be overcome. Throw a small towel in. But I do not wish to wash and dry another piece of laundry. Sorry. but that's the only answer. Asked where in their literature this procedure was mentioned.

'Sorry sir' came the response, 'please contact the retailer to make arrangements for collection and full refund'.

Grumpy driver came to collect on his own. Wanted a hand to get it down the steps. Strangely, I felt my bad back return.

I had a washing machine where the concrete lump shattered. I tried to fix it back together with gorrilla snot or similar, no luck.

I just took all the bits out and it went on for years and never wandered far,

Neil

During my term as an Army Instrument Tech. I had occasion to help repair the engines of the American Howitzers we kitted with, the cooling system had two fans driven by quill shafts at an angle, due to the load and high revving these quill shafts snapped and we had to lift the engine out complete to remove and replace the parts.

We ordered new quill shafts and 2 were allocated to each gun as spare but, on a visual inspection the maker had failed to mill the splines! I think it took about 6 months to get replacements that were correct, meanwhile we were scrounging off the Germans who had good ones. No doubt they made their own., The point here is that we were ordering high quantities as we had to have spare capacity for repair. So how did they miss the splines on the shafts.