[Boatanchors] Review on the "Isolated" Variac I bought (another long ramble)

[Michael Hanz]

I don't have any mainland Chinese equipment except for a sheet metal 
notcher in the machine shop, but after having several metalworking 
machines pass through here in my younger years, I'd have to agree with 
most of the home shop community, who have found _all_ mainland Chinese 
machines to be unfinished works in progress, requiring some degree of 
effort to finish off before you can effectively use them.  (Not true of 
Taiwanese products, which match Japanese equipment in quality, but then 
they are significantly more expensive.)  The tradeoff is your time to 
figure out the limitations and make them right versus the initial low 
cost of the product.  As long as folks buy them eyes open with that 
understanding, I see no problem with rating is as you have - 3 stars, 
with 5 star potential in the beginning of your writeup.

73,
Mike  KC4TOS

On 4/2/2016 3:13 PM, Phil wrote:
> OK, if I were giving this a "star rating" (5 star scale), how would I 
> rate it?????????????????
>
> As it came from the factory with the shaft wobble etc I would rate it 
> a '3' as I feel that would probably affect long term reliability.
>
> AS IT IS NOW AFTER THE MODS, IF THE FACTORY SHIPPED IT LIKE THIS I 
> WOULD RATE IT A FULL '5 STARS'. . .
>