New door struts - black and stainless - Anyone interested?

[SIMid]

Not to worry, thanks for trying!

[Tomcio]

no worries. thanks for making sure quality is good. How much are they sticking you for?

Thanks all all your support guys. Like I said, I'm not giving up! I see that there is a need for the struts and I'm working hard on getting another "real" manufacturer to make it happen for real.
This company owes me just over 2000 Euro which equals to just under $2800. The first order was for 100 units.
I made it pretty clear that I will not let them get away with it and they're telling me that they just need to prepare their paperwork and they will send the refund next week. The problem is that they are only willing to refund 50% of the initial price. We'll see what happens.
As for the struts... For some reason they don't want them back. I guess I might offer them as a budget solution to droopy doors. Maybe that way I'll get the other half of my money back. What do you guys think about this?
I have a couple of quotes from other European manufacturers and I'm still awaiting a few more. One German manufacturer (no, it's not Stabilus) is quoting me $45 each with an order of 500 units. Another German manufacturer has given me a quote of €33.50 ($45.60) each with minimum order of 100 units BUT the strut would be 425mm long while ours are 365mm. I don't get it... I ask them for 365 and they send me a quote for 425. That's 60mm (2 and 1/3 inch) longer! Interesting approach to "tolerance"...

[dmc6960]

Hrmph.

So, you received your order, but they were made in china. What else specifically makes them low quality? Are they completely different from your initial example sets? Do they still function as required? Curious.

[Tomcio]

Hrmph.

So, you received your order, but they were made in china. What else specifically makes them low quality? Are they completely different from your initial example sets? Do they still function as required? Curious.

Jim, I did receive my order, but I don't think they were made in China. I received a quality control sheet in one of the boxes which I believe was supposed to be removed before the box was sent to me. There are no Chinese characters on it and the names are not Chinese either. India maybe... I don't know.
The production struts do not function as required. They are similar in appearance to the example sets but do look a bit cheaper. The real problem is the damping function. It would be difficult to find two that work the same. In some cases there is no damping and the strut hits it's limit with such force that it's scary. Others are too slow with a few that are extremely slow. I found one where the initial travel would take just 1.5 seconds and then it would slow down so much that it took another 40 seconds to reach the end of the travel. If I was to offer them I would choose the ones that are good and I would discard the ones that have no damping or are too fast or too slow.
Their force is mostly good at around 1200N but I did find one with just 1090N. The allowed tolerance is + or - 30N.

The initial example units were perfect. They all worked exactly as they should with perfect force, perfect speed and perfect damping. Unfortunately I don't know who made them. It wasn't this manufacturer.

[BABIS]

Jim, I did receive my order, but I don't think they were made in China. I received a quality control sheet in one of the boxes which I believe was supposed to be removed before the box was sent to me. There are no Chinese characters on it and the names are not Chinese either. India maybe... I don't know.
The production struts do not function as required. They are similar in appearance to the example sets but do look a bit cheaper. The real problem is the damping function. It would be difficult to find two that work the same. In some cases there is no damping and the strut hits it's limit with such force that it's scary. Others are too slow with a few that are extremely slow. I found one where the initial travel would take just 1.5 seconds and then it would slow down so much that it took another 40 seconds to reach the end of the travel. If I was to offer them I would choose the ones that are good and I would discard the ones that have no damping or are too fast or too slow.
Their force is mostly good at around 1200N but I did find one with just 1090N. The allowed tolerance is + or - 30N.

The initial example units were perfect. They all worked exactly as they should with perfect force, perfect speed and perfect damping. Unfortunately I don't know who made them. It wasn't this manufacturer.

not professional at all! I really hate when manufacturers do this kind of things..

[Chris 16409]

Sounds like they outsourced the project/order to some other firm. Maybe they realized they would loose too much money if they produced the struts themselves.

[Tomcio]

Sounds like they outsourced the project/order to some other firm. Maybe they realized they would loose too much money if they produced the struts themselves.

Well, maybe. Who knows. This is a real manufacturer and they do make struts. The price increase they were trying to force on me twice seems to confirm your idea. They made the first test units themselves but then realized that the price they quoted me was too low. So, they just had them made in some other country. Believe me, the writing on the test sheet is in some strange language I don't even know.

Anyway... the quest is on to find a real manufacturer that will be able to produce high quality gas struts at a reasonable price. So far the quotes I get are around €40 - €50 per unit. That's pretty expensive as it equals to $55 - $68. That's my price, before taxes and shipping. So, the search is on.

There is one interesting offer... A local manufacturer that offers some interesting technical improvements. One of them is a special type of piston that doesn't use hydraulic damping. Instead the piston dampens the movement by some other means, don't know how, yet. The advantage is that the strut can be mounted in any orientation (piston rod up or down or sideways). There are no seals to dry out which sounds really nice. They are working on a quote for me and I should have the details this coming week.

Stay tuned...

Here's a quote from a great movie (can you guess what movie that is?):
Never give up, never surrender!

[NightFlyer]

Here's a quote from a great movie (can you guess what movie that is?):
Never give up, never surrender!

Too easy

[Tomcio]

Too easy

Spot on!

[Starglider]

I have some news... Unfortunately I have bad news... I'm really sorry to say this as this is a great disappointment but the door strut deal did not work out. This company has taken me for a ride. After all this trouble, a price increase, then another price increase, then a long delay they sent me some crap made overseas. At this time I should be taking orders in and sending great struts all over the world. Instead I'm trying to get my money back.

Sorry to hear that, hope you manage to find another supplier. Is the LED marker lights project still going, I remember you ran into supplier problems there as well?