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Old 2004.03.13, 10:09 AM   #1
Pedro Castro
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Thumbs down Topcad Sucks!!!!

I must say...after seeing all the posts in this sit referring the bad quality of TOPCAD materials and after my friend Warfile`s bad experience with it, i was a foul when i bought TOPCAD`S ANTI_ROLL BAR, yesterday morning.
I asked Warfile if he could assemble it in my car, since he as much more experience in R/C than me.Well, it toke him 2 hours to put the dam thing working correctly!!


After many frusteded attempts, he realized that the holes in the steering plate were too short, and the all piece (together with the little h-plate) was not well alligned) ; this was causing the suspension to be stuck...

Fortunely, he had an idea (an good one, i think...) : assemble the original KYOSHO steering plate with the TOPCAD h-plate.
So, besides drilling the holes on the steering plate (wich we didn`t use, ater all...), he also had to drill the original steering plate, so it could fit the h-plate...
Not really lots of work, but this was inteded to be a simple job, and in the end it took us 2 hours of frusteded attempts and tons of patience...and now i must say...TOPCAD SUCKS!!!!
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Old 2004.03.13, 02:03 PM   #2
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yep thus why we all said not to buy topcad stuff -- all of the stuff is made by GPM... topcad buys the.. not so good lot of the stuff.. while megatech buys the better stuff, proline in between... and MZR.. well they buy from another factory .

If you buy it cheap, you will buy it twice...
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Old 2004.03.13, 03:28 PM   #3
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I have had a set of topcad rims for a while. They're fine. Maybe I just got lucky.
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Old 2004.03.13, 05:37 PM   #4
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It´s true, it took me two all hours to put the anti roll bar together!
At the end, i use the original one that i have cut and sand to look like the roll bar and then assembly the carbon h plate.
So my friend bought the three little carbon fiber plates, the roll bar was an extra.
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Old 2004.03.17, 02:14 PM   #5
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all of the stuff is made by GPM... topcad buys the.. not so good lot of the stuff.. while megatech buys the better stuff, proline in between... and MZR.. well they buy from another factory .

If you buy it cheap, you will buy it twice...

Well if that is true that GPM cherry picks its production out put and sells to the highest bidder or the most volume then GPM is the company to boycot not topcad.

As a quality professional who understands manufacturing process control that is the most apalling display of disrespect for its customers I've ever seen.

To knowingly sell bad parts at a lower price to save the cost of scraping or reworking it is bad business. That tells me GPM doesn't care what they sell if that is really true. In the end they are only hurting their own reputation.

GPM ought to improve the capability of their processes so they don't produce any parts that out of spec that have to be sold at a discount. If GPM did that they could sell all of their production at the same price for lower cost with higher profit.

If you don't want to have to put up with crap like this when you spend your hard earned cash on rc parts don't patronize a company you know produces off spec parts and then sells them to you under various names.

If you all stop accepting poor quality from the parts suppliers the ones who can't improve will die and the one who can improve will. That way when you spend your money you know you'll get parts that do what the manufacturer claims they do.
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Old 2004.03.17, 02:27 PM   #6
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That was one of the hardest posts to understand...especially the first part
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Old 2004.03.17, 04:21 PM   #7
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he should have used quotes.

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Old 2004.03.17, 05:00 PM   #8
easy
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It's pretty simple really,

The quotes says GPM inspects and sorts its production into 3 piles as follows:

1. Good parts that fit properly and work as they should, sold to one company. These are sold at top dollar.

2. A second pile of parts that will work but will not fit together quite as easily and may wear out sooner or not perform as well as the best parts. As a consolation these parts are sold for less money.

3. A third pile of parts that will require modification to fit together as described in the original post and will not function as promised out of the box. These sell for an even lower price to offset the frustration you're sure to experience from parts that don't fit and likely don't work right.

It was suggested the quality level from each of the companies selling GPM parts is consistent at good, medium and poor quality and that the quality each companies provides is dependant upon price they sell at.

I am saying don't blame topcat blame GPM. Topcat may knowingly buy at lower prices but I doubt they know the parts are inferior assuming all of their GPM supplied parts are actually inferior.

If that is true it means GPM sorts its product into different quality levels and sells it at different prices thinking they are making more money. If they are doing that they are actually loosing more money than they would if they held the dimensions tighter when making the parts and made all parts first quality.

Either GPM can't make its parts to the required specifications or the tolerance on their specifications is too wide. A third possibility is they don't know the parts are out of spec because they do not inspect enough of their parts or they do not inspect them accurately enough.

Dimensional tolerances determine if a part will fit and function correctly or not. However the farther the dimensions are from ideal the harder the parts are to fit together. Performance and durability also drop off the farther away from ideal the parts are.

I have worked with many skilled and experienced machineists who all worked within specifications. Meaning as long as the parts are in tolerance they are ok. The problem is if you work close to the dimensional tolerances some parts will be outside the tolerances because every process varies to some degree.

If you work close to the tolerances you must check every part and throw away the ones that are outside the dimensional tolerances. The problem is checking every part is tedious and expensive so few do it.

Throwing away parts that are out of spec is even more expensive and most small companies can't afford to do that so in some cases they sort the parts and then sell them off to different customers at different prices.

Statistical process and quality control is very complicated but the basic principal is simple and that is:

Do it right the first time, if you don't you have a situation like the one above. If you've heard the term Six Sigma in the media and wondered what it was about the above situation is what Six Sigma prevents. ISO 9000 also helps to prevent quality problems like those in the original post too.
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Old 2004.03.17, 10:04 PM   #9
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I've got a couple problems with that GPM statement.

First of all, I don't believe for a second that Topcad could unknowingly buy inferior products from GPM. How could they NOT know?! You can't sell seconds or thirds quality products without letting the buyer know what they are getting. I'm talking about Topcad buying from GPM without knowing.

Second, how do you even know that GPM is selling to Megatech, Topcad, etc.? You said it, but that doesn't make it true.

Finally, if Topcad is selling inferior products, whether they know it or not, I place the blame with them, not GPM. Ultimately, they must be held accountable for what they sell, not GPM.
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Old 2004.03.17, 10:13 PM   #10
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Not trying to dispove anyone or anything but this is from the Topcad site:

Quote:
We pride ourselves on the integrity of our designs, and on the Kryptonite strength of our products. Our #1 goal at TOPCAD is to deliver you the highest quality r/c racing parts on the planet.
Our racers work together with our design and development team to assemble the best and most advanced line of intermediate, expert and professional race gear available.
From the sounds of that it seems that they claim to design and make thier own parts. Could they say this if they were actually buying GPM designed parts?
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Old 2004.03.18, 12:21 AM   #11
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If that's true, Ryu...then Topcad really needs to work harder!
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Old 2004.03.18, 01:03 AM   #12
easy
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Quote:
Originally posted by Ryutech
Not trying to dispove anyone or anything but this is from the Topcad site:



From the sounds of that it seems that they claim to design and make thier own parts. Could they say this if they were actually buying GPM designed parts?
Unfortuneatly this doesn't mean much, what else would they say about their products?

A company doesn't have to manufacture or design their own parts to make this claim. They can hire someone to do it for them and still make that claim.

TOPCAT does have a responsibility to verify their parts will fit and function as promised. But their supplier also has a responsibility to provide them with what they asked for.

The problem is you really don't know who or what these companies are. Both could simply be distributors or marketing companies with no manufacturing facilities at all.

Even if they are both machine shops they may not be dedicated to making rc parts and they may not have any certified engineers to design the parts or the processes that manufacture them. They may simply be a shop with an rc enthusiast or 2 who decided to fill some idle capacity by making rc parts.

The biggest problem here is that none of the information about TOPCAT or GMP and the others can be verified so it is all speculation.

My reason for getting into the manufacturing aspect of this topic was to try and help people understand what these specialty or botique part manufacturers are really like. They are small companies with limited resources compared to the major brand names. They often do not have sophisticated design and manufacturing processes and that results in inconsistent quality.

Quite often the boutique parts that are supposed to be so much better are often actually inferior in design and quality. Enthusiasts will over look these realities because they like tyo tinker with their cars and assume doing so is part of the high performance experience.

Sorting parts and selling the best to a prefered customer is not uncommon. It is however unethical and if some one can prove that any of the companies knowingly does this they should provide proof.

If proof is made available don't buy from that company and they will either clean up their act or fail. If they fail that's good, it opens the market for better companies to take their place.
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Old 2004.03.18, 09:44 AM   #13
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Hey Easy...it's TOPCAD....not Topcat, that was a cartoon in the 60's
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Old 2004.03.18, 03:47 PM   #14
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Yup I remember that cartoon... thanks for pointing out my error, I suppose I should have gone to the effort to list the names of all the companies mentioned to make that post easier to follow and keep the names straight.

Sorry folks.
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Old 2004.03.18, 07:15 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally posted by easy
TOPCAT does have a responsibility to verify their parts will fit and function as promised. But their supplier also has a responsibility to provide them with what they asked for.

.....

The biggest problem here is that none of the information about TOPCAT or GMP and the others can be verified so it is all speculation.
If a company is selling inferior products, they alone should be held responsible. Once they take delivery of the product from the supplier and fail to make a claim for any inferior parts that were delivered, that's it.

And if none of the information can be verified, why are we even discussing this issue?! It's not fact, but you present it as such. Speculation is speculation, period.
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