It's Myford Jim, but not as we know it!

I bought a 30/12 Fine Feed Tumbler Gear bought from the new Myford Ltd and fitted it to a genuine Nottingham Myford Super 7 with genuine Nottingham Myford change gears and genuine Nottingham Myford idler gears.
I turned the gear manually before engaging drive and found half of it ran fine and half of it was "lumpy", the root between two of the teeth in the "lumpy" section of the 30 tooth gear on this product was 0.58mm shallower than average with the tooth either side causing the idlers to jam solid.
On measuring the teeth I found the tolerances were all over, needing it working this weekend I hand fettled it to run smoothly.
I find it a further disappointment that this part has no rear roller bearing or front brass bush as was the case with genuine Nottingham Myford parts, it should be advertised as a good basis for someone with reasonable bench work skills to fettle into a usable product, as delivered it would have damaged my idler gears if used.

Had a similar experience with ML7 gears from RDG a few years back.

A couple of the people I made 33/34 gears for commented on this also.

Have you told Myford about the problem?

My original Nottingham Myford fine feed cluster also has a plain bore, though the normal driver, where you can change the output gear, as you say has the needle roller and bronze bush.
The teeth however are the correct size and in the right place.

Bill

I considered it but what are they going to do, start checking products which they have not bothered to check so far and scrap the rejects or sell them anyway and expect a certain level of returns and for the other users to put up with shoddy products with a "Genuine Myford" sticker on them?
My money is on the latter given the obvious lack of QC/QA which they evidently currently apply, their past behaviour means they don't get an even break or the benefit of the doubt from me.

You should be telling Myford and demanding a guaranteed fit for purpose replacement within 5 working days. They do need to check every item they have in stock and have it reworked or remade by a local British company to ensure the quick turnaround. They will also need to be taking it up with their supplier and suing for all costs, including yours. This is what we do in equivalent circumstances although a different kind of industry.

We don’t actually know what their QC policy is.

It may be quite stringent but this is a ‘one in a lot’ that has got past the inspection. In that case they would replace it immediately.

On the other hand they may simply replace the faulty ones found by purchasers, with no QC checks by themselves. Not so good as there may be a lot of shoddy ones supplied to them by shoddy manufacturers.

The worst scenario is one of couldn’t care less and no replacement until proven faulty on return of the product at the buyer’s expense. Not such a good system for retaining custom.

Are any of our suppliers ISO9000 compliant? I would imagine companies like Boxford, original Myford, Colchester were but are any of the current main traders?

I was ‘somewhat surprised’ to read this, on Cyclex :

”We opened our doors before ‘Modern Britain’ began and waited as two World Wars made demands upon UK manufacturing. It controlled our workforce and our output but it didn’t change our belief in standards or our pursuit of quality and reliability.”

So it would appear that the good folks at Mytholmroyd are asserting ‘continuity’ from the Beeston operation.

MichaelG.

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Ref. : https://mytholmroyd.cylex-uk.co.uk/company/myford-ltd-12921164.html

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 24/11/2019 17:54:13

I bought 2 off 50t 'myford' gears fro RDG a few years ago, the idea being to have 60/40 or 50/50 without moving the changewheel studs. The 60/40 came with the lathe from Beeston Myford many moons ago, and I presume are good, so I used them to set the centres. The 50/50 had huge backlash, back to RDG for immediate no questions refund, and bought a pair from Beeston Myford. Seems like then at least they were relying on the customer to do the inspection.

I'm assuming that RDG didn't buy Myford's gear shaper at the auction...

Very interested to see this post as within the last month I have been through a saga with these Myford fine feed gears.

I bought one from Myford via Ebay for my ML7R , when it turned up the bore was tapered and would only fit on the shaft for about a third of its length, trying with a piece of silver steel confirmed that the bore was tapered rather than any fault with the shaft, after a few exchanges of messages I returned it. After a number of days of hearing nothing I had to send an inquiry as to what was going on as far as a replacement was concerned, followed by a phone call.

The impression I was given on the phone was that this was a rare occurrence and was I sure the fault was not with my machine. A new gear was sent which fitted the shaft, but ran out so badly that it would only revolve half a turn, to use it would I feel have stripped the fibre gears. At this I gave up and returned it via the Ebay returns scheme, and received a paypal refund. I bought a secondhand gear off ebay which was cheaper and fitted perfectly. Very disappointed that such poor quality items are being sold under the Myford name, I suppose I could have fettled the second gear sent, but at just less than £40, why should I have to?

At the same time I bought two changewheels for my Colchester Bantam from RDG, these needed a bit of fettling to remove burrs, but they did fit ok and run true and mesh well. They were very cheap, much less than used ones go for, so I didn't mind doing a little work on them.

As ever you get what you pay for, but if you pay genuine article prices, I believe some quality control should be carried out before sending out.

Dave W

We should probably distinguish between RDG Tools Ltd. and Myford Ltd.

... Although some of the same people are involved in both businesses, I understand that they are separate limited companies and ‘ring-fenced’.

MichaelG.

[ please correct me if you know better ]

There's also RDG Tools online Ltd, which seems to be a different company again.

Bill

That’s interesting, Bill ... thanks

Interesting but not at all unreasonable, I hasten to add.

MichaelG.

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Edit: curiously, RDG Tools Ltd. appears not to be listed at Companies House ... so presumably it’s just an abbreviation of RDG Tools online Ltd.

Ref. https://www.rdgtools.co.uk/cgi-bin/mf000001.pl?ACTION=SHOWFORM

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 26/11/2019 00:26:39

Sorry if I gave the impression in my above post that I thought RDG and Myford were the same vendors I got the gears from, they were of course entirely separate transactions. I just wanted to illustrate that expectations of quality differ between vendors, and of course reflect in the price paid.

Sadly as a long term Myford user I do believe not done it yet has hit the nail on the head in his post and that Nick and I did not just get a bad one out of the batch, but the QC is left to the customer.

In fairness I should say that other parts bought from Myford since the change of ownership have been fine, and hope this is a one off.

Dave

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… and please accept my apologies, Dave; if it seemed that my comment was directed at you.

It was simply a broad observation, prompted by having seen such conflation several times in the past.

MichaelG.

I admit I haven't perused ISO 9000 or any of its derivatives lately but experience years ago suggested that the certifying body was more interested in whether you were complying with your own rules than the absolute merit of how you went about your business. So if your system required checking one in ten thousand products and you did so, and documented the fact, you were compliant

It seems to me that ISO9000 does consist of declare what you do and keep records of it, I am sure there must be more to it than that but that is the impression I get.

Mike