I agree. I don’t think I’d take the one back to the small shop, I don’t think that a small shop could afford to spend that much money on a fixture table or might not even have room for it. For the other shops I think it might open their eyes because you never know who you’re doing the work for. If you hold your standards high, you don’t need to worry about who you’re working for because you know you’re doing top quality work and giving the customer exactly what they asked for. I’m wondering if the shops just sized him up and figure what they made was going to be good enough.
I rarely ever interact with youtubers, but his one caught my eye.
Please reach out to the shops you hired request an RMA, preferably to have them redo the work. As the Buyer/Procurement Agent and a Production Control Analyst at my company (Aero/defense Engineering Contractor) I deal with this every day. It is incredibly important (except maybe for the small shop) that the deliverable errors be noted and addressed for a company. I don’t know what sort of Quality standards (ISO9001, 6sigma, etc.) the shops are certified with/ promise/ aspire to (if any), but for any vendor I work with, meeting the specs of the engineering drawing is the bare minimum, and having the customer call them out when that does not happen is part of getting better.
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dont use the shops anymore and give bad review on google !!!
I personally, would like to know if I failed to meet a customers spec. Even if you don’t need/want a refund/replacement, I would politely touch base with them, perhaps sell them a discounted table.
I would be curious to hear why the one shop chose aluminium w/out asking for clarification or is he an aluminum fabricator specifically?
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I’d like to know what the shops who made the frames generally do. For example, a shop that does Structal steel/misc. iron isn’t going to be able to hold a 1/16" tolerance very easily when the allowable tolerance (generally) is about 1/4 when you’re fabricating Structal steel/misc. iron.
Did Jason do his due diligence in selecting a shop that generally works to a 1/16"? What kinds of shop did he select and why? Why was the material type not specified out on the drawing? Why did the shops not pick up on that? There’s a lot of unanswered questions.
Those frames served their purpose, Props for making content, I would throw them in the scrap container and move on.
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I would also go with a fourth option: take them back and as an opportunity to introduce your company. Explain that the pieces were not done to spec, but since you used them in a youtube video and so were able to get some use out of them anyways, that you do not want a refund. Who knows, maybe they would be interested in partnering with Fireball Tools.
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I would show the managers this video and let them decide what they want to do. It might help them to identify flaws in their fab shop and make improvements in the quality.
I work in remodeling and all this talk about the table being too expensive is bunk. It’s a key element for perfect fabrication. Anyone who values their craft would make this investment because it would pay for itself within the first year if you’re a good at following customers orders.
I’ve invested 2k just in one wet saw because of its engineering and tolerances. And overall I’ve spent nearly 60k in all my tools and equipment. The difference in the accuracy between it and my 800.00 saw is night and day.
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I agree partly.
If you order something with specs and tolerances, and someone accepts the job, they should deliver.
I would find it fait if someone’d charge premium for the tight tolerances.
But charging normal (although it’s stupid they took Alu for the first one without asking) for a part that is not to spec is not a good deal.
I’d go back and tell them it’s not to spec and have it fixed
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I have one…! Expensive….absolutely! But so was my plasma table, so was my welders, so was….etc etc. the table has increased my productivity by 30-40% not even trying. Even the smallest of jobs are just so much faster letting the table do the work. It’s an investment into better products and better service. IMO
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I’m voting “take them back and have them fix it”, but the intent of my vote is I just want to know what their thought process was that allowed them to arrive at “Yeah, this is ready to go to the customer.”
Seeing such an expensive invoice in combination with little to no regard to customer specifications represents a huge disconnect, especially considering these individuals presenting themselves as “professionals”.
It would be interesting to hear their explanations for…
- Why they did not follow specs (such as grinding both sides, instead of leaving one side untreated)
- What kind of equipment / processes they used.
- How they arrived at the price they charged.
Would be fun to see if they are actually capable of fulfilling the request - at all.
When I see these results, I can’t help but connect their work with the faceless keyboard warriors we run into on “professional” and DIY forums. It’s “just” a frame. We’ll “just” cut out the parts and weld it together.
Skilled professionals rarely use the word “just”. That’s my primary gauge, and it tends to be fairly accurate.
Ditto Nosferatu 100%. I like the idea of kicking it back and asking them what they think should be done.
If it was my business, I’d want to know we failed to deliver.
The first shop that failed to meet material specifications? Unacceptable and worthy of a Google review. That’d be more than mildly annoying if it was a part you were waiting on to continue with a project. I wouldn’t have paid for it and left with nothing more than a full refund.
However in your case, you’ve managed to utilize all of your frames for media/entertainment and seeking out refunds would be wrong imo. Let the shop decide what to do - if offered a refund kindly decline and show them your video. If they offer to remake it, explain you will not pay for it if it’s out of spec. If they take the job and fail twice, link them to the video.
I’ve always known having the right tool for the job made it far easier, so I wasn’t alarmed when your man nailed the specifications.
Flatness is probably the hardest of the tolerances to hit out of the gate.
The issue with flatness is that even with good fixturing, welding will introduce stresses into the material that will pull it out of flat once the clamping is released.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to fix as you say. Certainly, easier than making a tube longer!
In every case I am willing to bet the fabrication shop gave this to their “novice” fabricator. Heck, it may have been the guy pushing the broom that wanted something “fun” for a change. Getting young, talented fabricators is getting harder and harder these days, as well as making any money in custom fabrication. Since you ordered only (2) from each fab shop, it was probably hard to even justify doing business with you in the first place, and the experienced fabricators were all probably working on more profitable jobs.
Your animator gave the task extra attention because he probably knew what he was going to be compared to: things come out a lot nicer if you “care”.
If material is not clearly specified in the BOM, in all 3 cases you should have gotten a call back clarifying material (unless you have a shop that says they only build ‘exclusively’ with mild steel). 2 of 3 shops guessed right.
Most likely, “flat” to their standard is probably just laying it out on the fab table, which, has probably seen a lot of weld spatter and a lot of grinding. It was probably not worth their time to take a grinder to their fab table for a qty of 2.
I don’t particularly agree with the three choices given. My recommendation is that you just give the test samples back (without demanding your money), tell them they don’t meet print, and ask them what they would like to do. It most likely wasn’t a large enough job to get a lot of attention for QC, maybe ask each shop if the quantity was 100 instead of 2, would there be some differences in the results?
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Worse than just waiting: Frames like these could easily be supposed to be structural for a tree house or something. Maybe you booked a vacation but got a buddy to take delivery of the frames and put them in while you are away and you forget to mention that they will be steel because why would you?
Now that structure sits on a pair of under-specced frames because some half-senile fab-shop owner decided on a different material.
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I didn’t vote because I would have picked take them back and ask them to fix them, or refund your money, that gives them 2 fair options. The fact that you provided a detailed set of plans and specifications, minus the type of material, should have told them one thing. Even though the item was simple, your tolerances were not, so it should have been given to someone with both welding and fabrication experience, and not to, guessing here, a new guy learning the ropes.
First off you are a tool company. Show back up to each one of them shops and show them how they can improve. FFS you sell tables. Take a table and some tools and go show them how to do it. Each one of them fab shops are your prime buyers.
Instead of being a fool. Use this to sell the tables to these shops. The more places that understand how to use your table the better. Its a 20 thousands dollar investment to buy and stock those tables.
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OH well, thought this got posted in the wrong spot, so back again. Use the steel ones for the side support, bolt the aluminum vertically to the back, slap a couple pieces of plywood on the bottom and the back, maybe some Naugahyde covered foam rubber on the plywood and you have a couple shop chairs for break time, albeit, expensive ones, maybe upgrade the Naugahyde to real leather.
I work in a custom fab shop as a saw operator and I know that immediately customers would bring things like that back and they will be corrected. 90% of what I produce on the automated saw has a tolerance of .032" and 1° for angles so a 16th of an inch is completely reasonable tolerance level and should be easily met by any shop.
The remedy is to do smaller welds not do a whole joint at once so you’re reducing the amount of heat stress on each corner.