"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 08:42:13 -0500, Swingman wrote:

On 3/23/2012 10:44 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

ISO does not assure high quality. It assures consistency. If you
make a high quality product, the next one will be the same as the
last. If you make a crappy product, the next one will be the same as
the last.

ISO certification means you have policies and procedures to cover a
series of situations. Inspections certify that you follow them.

It is painfully apparent that many product spec's, including ISO, have
never been translated into Mandarin, or any of the myriad of other
languages spoken in China/Pacific rim.


The real problem is not the translation, but the specification
writers. If you specify cheap material made into a cheap assembly,
you get a crap product. It is often the American engineers and bean
counters writing those specs.

I've found some very high quality products from China. I've also
found some sleazy stuff being imported by US companies.

I've also been buying tooling from China. The quality is equal or
better, half the price and a third the delivery time. Our customers
won't pay the price for US made tooling so we either walk away from
the business and lay people off, or buy tooling from China and employ
people.

On that note, I cannot bring myself to buy HF tools for myself... though I
have stopped in the HF store near my office and picked up tools for others.
The last bad experience was my helping drywall about 800 sq ft of space with
someone who had a HF drywall driver. I used my 25+ year old Porter Cable
driver that I've used to rock 4-5 houses worth of space and the interior of
a retail store in a strip mall. I could have done all the driving myself in
less total time than was spent with both tools. This due to the time spent
messing around with the HF driver's depth stop (that never seemed to be
right). Listening to the gritty motor on the HF tool wasn't pleasant
either...

That said, I have a bunch of Jet stationary tools and my DJ-20 hails from
Taiwan as I recall. Thus it's not a complete aversion to foreign tools it's
an aversion to low end foreign tools.

John