BrianMadigan
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2016
- Messages
- 1
I made the mistake of ignoring EVERYBODY'S perfectly good advice advice and got ahold of one of the Chinese knockoff engraving machines. I've been doing hand engraving and I thought I'd speed things up a bit for the large pieces I do as a knife maker. Not so fast!
I set it up as per the instructions, set the air pressure and powered it on. The light goes on, but no fap fap fap from the rotary valve. The gear motor does not spin. So I took the cover off to see what's what. The speed control unit had jumped out of its socket. So I plugged that back in and it worked fine. EXCEPT that it leaks air from every internal fitting excessively. This is annoying, and causes my compressor to cut in every 20 seconds or so. Even when I'm not using it. Yeah it leaks A LOT of air.
This is the inside:
The connector that goes to the air pressure gauge on the front was broken and its spring was distorted. The fitting on the back of the gauge doesn't clear the bracket where the motor is mounted. I fixed this by bending the bracket and re-installing the fitting with a repaired spring. Still leaks..
It DOES function, but the air leaking is annoying, and who knows when one of the fittings is just going to pop. You can see that no expense was spared in the assembly of this thing: sheet metal parts appear to be bent by hand to shape with pliers, use of a couple extra nuts as spacers, soldered connectors look like someone splashed solder on them instead of doing it properly. So, no offense to anyone of Chinese heritage, but this is typical of Chinese knock-off machinery. Yes, it's nearly half the price of a GRS System 3 Deluxe, but it's worth nothing if it doesn't work out of the box.
The anonymous retailer has offered a partial refund, anonymously through Ebay. They said "your local shop can fix, and we will partial refund".
The seller also knows nothing about engraving machines, they just sell 'factory discounts' or Chinese knockoffs basically.
So yeah, don't do what I did against all better judgement.
I set it up as per the instructions, set the air pressure and powered it on. The light goes on, but no fap fap fap from the rotary valve. The gear motor does not spin. So I took the cover off to see what's what. The speed control unit had jumped out of its socket. So I plugged that back in and it worked fine. EXCEPT that it leaks air from every internal fitting excessively. This is annoying, and causes my compressor to cut in every 20 seconds or so. Even when I'm not using it. Yeah it leaks A LOT of air.
This is the inside:
The connector that goes to the air pressure gauge on the front was broken and its spring was distorted. The fitting on the back of the gauge doesn't clear the bracket where the motor is mounted. I fixed this by bending the bracket and re-installing the fitting with a repaired spring. Still leaks..
It DOES function, but the air leaking is annoying, and who knows when one of the fittings is just going to pop. You can see that no expense was spared in the assembly of this thing: sheet metal parts appear to be bent by hand to shape with pliers, use of a couple extra nuts as spacers, soldered connectors look like someone splashed solder on them instead of doing it properly. So, no offense to anyone of Chinese heritage, but this is typical of Chinese knock-off machinery. Yes, it's nearly half the price of a GRS System 3 Deluxe, but it's worth nothing if it doesn't work out of the box.
The anonymous retailer has offered a partial refund, anonymously through Ebay. They said "your local shop can fix, and we will partial refund".
The seller also knows nothing about engraving machines, they just sell 'factory discounts' or Chinese knockoffs basically.
So yeah, don't do what I did against all better judgement.