Missing Quality control in Astronomy hardware?

[buzz]

I have only been interested in Astronomy for about a year now and the experience I have had points to a worrying lack of quality control in astronomy equipment manufacture (and design). This industry is clearly emergent in recent years and many manufacturers are niche and small affairs. To my mind however, this is not an excuse. I speak from personal experience since I have been a quality manager in a major automotive company and design and manufacture niche electronics for classical monochrome darkrooms and I am on the receiving end of customers problems too. I'll give some personal examples:

EQ6 mount - new - motor board failed in 1st week

EQ6 adjustment bolts handles have sharp edges and are not strong enough.

WO FLT98 with DDG R&P focuser - new - focus tube wobbles side to side and up and down like a £90 guidescope

WO GT81 scope - focus tube support bearings poorly adjusted and binding

GT81 scope rings are not deep enough for an attached dovetail to miss the focus lock

Berlebach tripod - missing spikes in the box

SX H18 CCD - returned twice for excessive blooming and then blackout at edges.

Motorised focuser, box marked as external sensor but none included

SX filter wheel - poorly adjusted wheel roller, fouls 2" filter as it goes past

Skywatcher powertank - refused to charge

WO FFIV - requires 0.5mm precision on setting but has a coarse scale in 10mm increments

Dewheater tape - bought new condition - short circuit

Tin plated contacts on hand controller, which require constant buffng to make reliable button presses (meade autostar)

I feel sorry for the dealers, like FLO and IKI. They are the ones who bear the brunt of the cost of returns etc. These issues were resolved and everyone has been very helpful - but that is not the point. It all costs time and money, theirs and mine. Some of the attraction of the hobby is this 'do-it-yourself' and 'it's no fun if it is easy' approach, but with major outlays......

regards

Chris

[steppenwolf]

Have to say, that is a rather sad list and certainly does make you wonder about current QC. I have been more fortunate than you but if I'm honest about it I too have been on the receiving end of problem gear and share your sympathy with the retailers who have to pick up the pieces.

Not sure what the solution is though - higher prices to allow for better QC? Sadly, I suspect that this would result in profiteering by the manufacturers that would still leave the retailers with the problems to resolve. I wouldn't want to be a retailer in this market so my hat's off too them!

[pete_l]

I think a part of the problem (apart form the market being so small) is the constant pressure to innovate. That means the the few designers / developers that astro companies employ are kept busy making the next product, rather than refining the existing ones. As a consequence a lot of the stuff that's on the market never really gets to the "Mark 2" version - where feedback from actual users gets addressed.

It also means that stuff can get rushed out the door before it's properly finished and tested. There's a saying in the art world that no painting is ever finished - it's merely abandoned. It's likely that with small production runs over short periods of time, astro product development gets to the point where it's "good enough" and then needs to get shipped to recoup the development costs, so the sales can finance the next great idea.

[Davey-T]

It also means that stuff can get rushed out the door before it's properly finished and tested. There's a saying in the art world that no painting is ever finished - it's merely abandoned. It's likely that with small production runs over short periods of time, astro product development gets to the point where it's "good enough" and then needs to get shipped to recoup the development costs, so the sales can finance the next great idea.

Sounds like a certain computer operating system

Davey-T

[knobby]

Totally agree with the O.P. QC lately stinks !

just ask Skywatcher250

He's just had an absolutely laughable, pants experience ... and its not over yet !

[Astro_Baby]

In defence of the manufacturers, and I have had a bad experience, on the whole the kit does work and the prices are good.

I have bought a fair bit of astro gear and most of it has worked and the QC has been perfect or at east acceptable.

Considerimg how much of this stuff is sold we do in fact see very few problems on boards like SGL. You have to remember as well that a big chunk of astro kit will never see first light. People buy this stuff and it appears on abay a few weeks later as 'never used because its so complicated etc etc'

Now if you were a manufacturer would you choose to absolutely spot on QC and up your price by 20% and most likley lose your market but satisfy a few extra people OR carry on as you are with the volumes and accept the odd dud product bearing in mind that only a small proportion of your output is ever used in anger anyway. Most is sold to drongos who wont ever use it after a night seeing Dr Cox and chums.

If you saw the whining that goes on everytime an astro equipment manufacturer raises the price you'd see no one wants to pay any more than absoluetely necessary, that translates to low cost and consequently low QC.

Its been said before that this has been the golden age of kit. You could go back to the 1970s when yo had a choice of cheap and nasty or perfect and expensive. The latter option meant a 70mm frac cost almost as much as a small car. The cheap and nasty option was a telescope of such appaling quality that a rolled up newspaper worked better.

These days you have massive choice and most of it is affordable to a greater number of people than ever before. i am happy for the odd dud bit of kit to hit the streets under those conditions.

A quick hit list of stuff I have bought and its QC is below, its not exhaustive but all I can remember after alot of brandy and wine.....

Skywatcher 200P...a lot of headaches caused by a less than helpful dealer. OVL stpped in and sorted it out.

Skywatcher panaview EPs in 26 and 38mm....perfect QC, beautiful glass for the price

Baader Hyperions in 5,8 and 13mm....QC perfect. No worries there.

2x Moonlite focusers...QC perfection. beautifully made.

Antares Finderscope....cheap and junky, should have known better.

Stellarvue F50....perfection.

ADM dual saddle, perfect.

Baader SSV...no problems there.

University Optics Orthos, perfect.

HEQ5....no problems.

Explore Scientific EPs in 14mm and 31mm.....no worries here either. QC spot on.

Pentax XWs in 5 and 10mm.....quality throughout.

Revelation 2" diagonal.....no worries there.

Skywatcher 130PM...perfect out the box.

Celestron Powertank....junky but cheap.

Maplins Powertank....junkier still but cheaper.

Celestron Nexstar 4SE...perfect from the box.

You can see from just that lot that a few bits of kit have failed but on the whole stuff has worked well and most of the fails have been cheap stuff.

[Wobbly Bob]

Of all the kit thats passed through my hands, only a couple of items had to be returned not fit for purpose. Many other bits and bobs just needed a technical tweek like a goto mount that kept loosing power for years until I decided to tune the gears and finding quite by accident the fault was the flipping connector, the teeniest nudge lost contact, so a couple of solder rings on the earth part solved the issue.

I have found the cheeper chineese kit really needs stripping down and tuned, for instance, the three secondary adjusment screws need to be removed and the contact end ground to a point.

High priced branded kit, mainly Eyepieces are superb, I have a Pentax and a Few Televues, expensive but they look and feel good plus they do what it says on the tin.

[wrinkly]

Long, long ago when Decca Radar had the pleasure? of being my employer, was amazed at the different Quality Control standards used throughout the group. Every single soldered joint was checked in the radar world but the cheap Dansette record player was not checked at all. It was cheaper to replace faulty units than to check them.

Wonder if the same thinking is used by the lower priced end of the astro market?

[Odd Thomas]

Hi Chris (OP)

I totally agree with you. I have said on numerous occasions how nice it would be to buy somthing that worked as it should out of the box without having to be tweaked or me rummaging through the workshop to find a bolt because there's one missing. I must admit to very rarely sending somthing back if I can fix it myself, which is probably the wrong thing to do regarding warranty issues etc.

[knobby]

All good points ...

But how hard is it to check that the finder bracket is in the box before sending ota out to someone that is already cheeses off after waiting close to a month to use their new scope

[Stu_2011]

Of all the kit thats passed through my hands, only a couple of items had to be returned not fit for purpose. Many other bits and bobs just needed a technical tweek like a goto mount that kept loosing power for years until I decided to tune the gears and finding quite by accident the fault was the flipping connector, the teeniest nudge lost contact, so a couple of solder rings on the earth part solved the issue.

I have found the cheeper chineese kit really needs stripping down and tuned, for instance, the three secondary adjusment screws need to be removed and the contact end ground to a point.

High priced branded kit, mainly Eyepieces are superb, I have a Pentax and a Few Televues, expensive but they look and feel good plus they do what it says on the tin.

I have bought lots of stuff recently and 98% of it has been perfect. People are hard on Chinese produced goods without really understanding the cultural but it's quite simple, you get what you pay for.

If you want cheap Rubbish then you can find a Chinese company to make it, similarly if you want world leading engineering made on state of the art machines then you can also find Chinese companies to make it for you. The Chinese tend to default to make it just to spec and no more and this is where Europeans tend to fall over. With the correct quality control (which I agree is often very lacking) and the correct financial incentives then the Chinese can do pretty much anything they want.

Im working on an optical / mechanical device at the moment and have found a Chinese company to make it and the quality now surpasses anything I've seen before and this includes German and Japanese companies.

Just imagine how bad all the astronomy kit would be if a company like British Leyland made the stuff!! It would be really bad and very expensive!

Thanks

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Mike Hawtin]

My experiences over a much longer time period than the OP's are no different, a large proportion of my purchases over the years have just not performed as advertised. I don't think it is unreasonable to make a purchase based on a manufacturers claims for the product but far too often that has turned out to be a recipe for disappointment. I'm not just talking about the smaller manufacturers either, my first Meade telescope was also my last, complete rubbish. I have had four Celestron sct's pass throught my hands which were poor performers optically. My Nexstar 11GPS was advertised at the time as capable of pec which was simply untrue with the original mc board and even when the board was replaced the reduction gearbox had a non integral period which rendered pec completely ineffective. I have just bought a "premium" mount costing over 4,000 pounds which will not autoguide. I have also had Vixen and William Optics products which turned out to be expensive failures. I have such a low level of expectation of the quality of the kit on the market that I will now only buy from a few select dealers who I know will refund or replace without argument. Before I retired I worked in QC for a well known UK manufacturer so I have a pretty good idea of what constitutes acceptable quality and sad to say most of the astro gear I have bought would have been either scrapped or rejected back to the supplier had they passed across my bench at work.

[Star Gazer]

Hi Buzz, As Stu_2011 says you get what you par for. If you have a Hyundai budget don't expect a BMW. There's plenty of ridiculously good quality kit out there. That meets some insanely high QC standards. Look no further than Astro-Physics or Takahashi to name but two. You just have to have a bigger wallet. Sure you've been unfortunate, but at least you can have 'a go' at astronomy with some quite incredible gear for a relatively modest outlay . A few years back that wouldn't have been possible.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I must say the OP has had a terrible run of bad stuff. I have only had one bad experience: the Celestron 15x70 bins I ordered arrived seriously out of collimation, and with a large chunk of something black in the optical pathway. That was resolved by the seller sending me a new pair of Omegon 15x70 bins. These later turned out to be not quite perfect, but I could fix it. However, remember that these were just 89 euros for bins that size. No wonder bad ones get through at that price point. My new Helios Apollo bins are in a different class.

One other thing to bear in mind is that optics are delicate. All sorts of mishaps during transport may throw things out of collimation.

[Mike Hawtin]

Hi Buzz, As Stu_2011 says you get what you par for. If you have a Hyundai budget don't expect a BMW. There's plenty of ridiculously good quality kit out there. That meets some insanely high QC standards. Look no further than Astro-Physics or Takahashi to name but two. You just have to have a bigger wallet. Sure you've been unfortunate, but at least you can have 'a go' at astronomy with some quite incredible gear for a relatively modest outlay . A few years back that wouldn't have been possible.

You get what you pay for is a very plausible sound bite, however in the real world things can be very different, the mount which produced the tracking charts in the attachment is currently on sale for 4,500 pounds, the pictures are worth a thousand words.

Mount #2 PE.doc

[John]

I have to say that most of the stuff I've bought over the years has worked pretty well and met my expectations (25+ scopes, half a dozen mounts and I've lost count of the eyepieces). 90% of it was bought used though so maybe that's why - perhaps the faulty new stuff has been weeded out by unlucky purchasers before it hits the used market. The new scopes I have had were a William Optics Megrez 90, a Skyliner 200P and, a TAL 100RT plus a few eyepieces here and there when I could not find them on the used market. All these were fine but they are simple kit I guess so not much to go wrong.

[Black Knight]

You get what you pay for is a very plausible sound bite, however in the real world things can be very different, the mount which produced the tracking charts in the attachment is currently on sale for 4,500 pounds, the pictures are worth a thousand words.

To me that seems more than a bit worrying. Is this a problem with your mount in particular, or is this sort of performance normal for this model in general? Is it fixable?

[Mike Hawtin]

To me that seems more than a bit worrying. Is this a problem with your mount in particular, or is this sort of performance normal for this model in general? Is it fixable?

I think it must be a problem with the model as the replacement mount is pretty much the same. I don't really want to go into too much detail atm as the dealer and maker have been very supportive and are still working on a solution to the issues.

[Black Knight]

I think it must be a problem with the model as the replacement mount is pretty much the same. I don't really want to go into too much detail atm as the dealer and maker have been very supportive and are still working on a solution to the issues.

No detail required! . It's good to hear that both the dealer and the manufacturer are both being supportive and working towards a solution. Although frustrating, that must be a weight off your mind ... I hope it all works out OK.