Timing Pulley

[PJ-27]

I've been locked in a war of attrition with HPC gears over the last few weeks that has culminated in me keeping a pulley I have no use for.
In fact they told me to Just bin it (Mature eh?) anyway, I have not use for it so instead of it gathering dust (or being binned) I wondered if it was any use to someone else?

It's a T5x10mm 14T Timing Pulley with a 6mm Bore and tapped grub screw on the boss for shaft fixing, brand new.

Let me know if you have a use for it. And I don't want people jumping on the free stuff band wagon, I could just keep it for myself for the sake of having it for free.

[team_orr]

Re: Timing Pulley

What was the issue with HPC? I was thinking of getting some of their stuff down the line. I'm in need of a timing pulley for my Drum/Beater, would save a lot of hastle methinks, so if your up for it PJ i'll throw my proverbial hat into the ring

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Timing Pulley

I'm in need of a timing pulley for my Drum/Beater

If you're thinking of getting it down the line, you'd be as well getting it from Technobots. The Synchroflex T5 16mm and 25mm pulleys are pretty good if you want a wider pulley/belt than the standard 10mm, and Technobots can usually open the bore up to a desired size (for a couple of quid) if you don't have the tooling to do it yourself.

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

@Jack It's just the one pulley though, you'd still need a 2nd and a belt. If you're interested you can have it. Are you at the Champs?

They kept messing me around, sending me other people's quotes, then mine but wrong, then they wanted £41.30 for a single pulley (not inc VAT) then they overcharged me, sent me the wrong order, expected me to pay to send that order back, and then charged me again for the correct order. Idiots. Their P&P is £8 too and their pulleys are rather pricey.

I used them because I needed a 14mm bore on one of the pulleys and T-bots couldn't do that. Plus I was advised that T-bots belts are crap (I've snapped one before just in testing!) so thought I'd use HPC belts.

Aside from that T-bots are ok, their pulleys are MUCH better priced (as is their P&P) and they quoted me £4.99 (Inc VAT) for the same pulley HPC did £41.30 (not inc VAT).

So unless you wanted a 14mm bore (T-bots seem to do every other size!) I'd use their Pulleys and get your belts elsewhere.

[team_orr]

Re: Timing Pulley

Right, Shant be using them then. In that case I will get some from Tbots, I already have 1 pulley but doubt they would work well together. Wont be at the champs, going to get everything 100% first. Where do people get their belts from? If HPC and Tbots are both Pish I'm a bit out of sources. Google brought up some cheapy chinease places but nothing that looks good.

Thanks,

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

HPC's stuff is good, it's just their sales department is incompetent.

[Mouldy]

Re: Timing Pulley

wierd- seems youve had a pretty bad experiance with them... theyve always been great for me. although yes there prices and p+p charges are rediculous...

You realise on the t-bots site theres an option for non standard bores? when you order you just put what bore size you want in the comments section....aslong as the bore isnt bigger then the boss on the pulley i wouldnt of thought it would be a problem.

Not suprised by the just bin it comment... hpc deal with big companies that order quite a few at once... such as where i work... its often cheaper for the person on the other end to chuck it, then to bother sorting out the logistics of sending it back to them... not so good for the rare people who order for themself.... you wouldnt believe the amount of good stuff big companies chuck away.

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

They did originally ask me to post it back! I told them to get stuffed, that's when they said bin it.

Indeed T-bots did do a non-standard option, but when I went to order it had disappeared. So I emailed them (they too got a snotty letter from me for something else they cocked up, what is wrong with British companies at the moment!? Need to complain about my broadband too *sigh*)
They said they had to remove the Non standard option because people kept asking for stupid things. He went on to say that the would do 12mm and 15mm, but not 14mm....
They did kindly offer (after a while) to do it if I sent them my shaft so that could QA their work, but by this time I was bound to HPC.

Here's the letter I sent HPC and their reply for those interested:

-

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm writing to make your aware of the terrible service I recently received from HPC gears. I required a couple of sets of specific custom timing pulleys and was recommended by a friend to use yourselves.
I decided to email my requirements and requested a quote, since although my requests weren't particularly complicated I'd figured this would be easier than trying to relay them on the phone. I later received a quote from a Hayley Newman, but it clearly bared no relation to myself and had a date reference form several months prior. I responded pointing this out, and relayed my request for a quote. I later received a 2nd email with equally little relevance to myself again. A third time I responded, pointing this out, requesting my quote again.
This time I received my quote, made a few amendments, clarified some details, included a diagram of my requirements and pointed out that £41.30 for my custom pulley was far too high and requested they try again.
I then got a response from a Tim explaining why the quote was so high (I later got a quote of £4.99 for the same work from a different company) and a new batch quote for my order.
At this point I had pretty much lost faith in HPC gears, but my friend insisted on his recommendation and pointing out that your Timing Belts are much higher quality than anywhere else.
With this in mind I decided to place my order, but without the custom pulley since this was clearly proving too difficult, so instead for 2 pulleys one with a custom bore and 1 belt.
I also decided to phone this time, relayed the part numbers and my custom requirements and got a quote that seemed too high again. I questioned it and discovered that I had been charged an additional amount for the grub screw fixing despite it being standard. This being rectified and myself no longer being overcharged (does your sales staff make a habit of pulling prices out of the air?) I was then informed that VAT was not included in my price (making the original quote of £41.30 even worse) and that I had to pay an additional £7.98 P&P bringing my order to a total of £51.57. By this point, growing quote weary, I simply decided to pay.
It was therefore odd when I was surprised to discover that my order was incorrect when I finally received my pulleys in the post. One was clearly wrong and the belt and 2nd pulley I assumed (perhaps unwisely) to be correct.
I phoned HPC gears to point this out was told I would be sent the correct pulley and asked to 'pop in the wrong one in the post' back to HPC. On receiving the correct pulley the next day I was also sent a new invoice for £11.26.

Firstly needless to say, I will not be paying the new invoice. I'm not paying HPC gears again to send me a pulley I've already paid for.
Secondly needless to say, I will not be 'popping' the incorrect pulley in the post back to you. I have already paid out £7.98 (which is extortionate) for you to send me the wrong item (I'm not doing the maths to see whether you charged me VAT on that also) so I'm most certainly not paying out a second time to send it back to you. If you want it, you can send me return addressed paid packaging.
Thirdly and finally, needless to say, unless my opinion of HPC gears is rapidly changed I will be advising others in my community of custom gear, timing pulley, belt, chain and sprocket laden hobby of my experience with yourselves.

Regrettably,

PJ Belcher

-

Good Morning

firstly may i apologise for any inconvenience caused. This is not the usual way that HPC would conduct business. I will look into what has happened and rest asured this will not happen again.

The invoice that has been received was for the replacement gear and we would credit the original invoice on its return so this would make the account clear.

Due to the problems you have incurred in placing your order we will credit this amount without the return of the gear. You can choose to keep the gear if it is of any use alternativly throw in the bin.

Once again for the problems you have had.

Kind Regards
Kate

-

Note they missed out the word sorry..... FAIL

[Mouldy]

Re: Timing Pulley

you should send them the useless pulley back, then invoice them for postage and admin fee ....+VAT

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

Hahaha, brilliant.

[geeza]

Re: Timing Pulley

HPC is good as Dave says, but we have had some issues recently as well. The sent us the wrong gears although the bags had the correct part numbers on what was inside was wrong. So we had to post them back at our expense also. Still waiting for the replacements 3 weeks later.

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

So we had to post them back at our expense also.

Should have held them ransom and then cut bits off and sent them in the post until they gave you what you wanted.

[m2xt]

Re: Timing Pulley

HPC have an excellent range of products and much of which is from stock but that inventory costs hence their pricing structure.

Technobots pricing is from what I have compared much lower than HPC but then we only stock the more common products and then the more common sizes within those ranges. There is room in the market for both business models as far as we are concerned.

As for quality, Technobots belts are Synchroflex - see http://www.contitech.de/pages/produk...roflex_en.html

They are certainly used widely in industry throughout the world without issue, not only by our own customers of course. We know that the most difficult application for any of our products is combat robots. I could spell out some of the reasons why but many of you will know many of the reasons. If belts are snapping then quite simply the application has exceeded the belts rating. What kills belts is a sudden application of power with minimal ramp up in power, stepper motors can equally be a problem where you need a heavier duty belt than you would first expect.

As for boring gears etc., this has taken off big time for Technobots and we continue to provide this service but as pointed out above, the non-standard size custom boring service has been dropped for now as it was proving too complicated.

All suppliers have issues from time to time with their products and service but it is how they deal with those issues that is important. I cannot and would not comment on other suppliers but we do try and resolve issues as soon as we can. Even as mentioned above, after removing the custom machining option, we did offer PJ a solution even not knowing at the time he was a FRA member. Okay too late to help at that time but the gesture was appreciated.

Moving on, I do pop in here every now and then to see what's happening, still miss the old days and sorry for hijacking the thread but hi to all those who remember me!

Paul

[PJ-27]

Re: Timing Pulley

we did offer PJ a solution even not knowing at the time he was a FRA member. Okay too late to help at that time but the gesture was appreciated.

Much appreciated! Didn't realise you were also a roboteer Paul.

How long before someone from HPC turns out to be a robot builder.....

As for my belt snapping I only did 4 spin up tests, only 1 was to full throttle, on all occasions the spin up was slow and rpm achieved was no more than what I reckon was about 4000 (given the reduction, Kv of the motor etc..) I should have thought my synchoflex belt would have been up to that.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Re: Timing Pulley

I use a 25mm Synchroflex belt on Drumroll spinning it up to around 7,000rpm with the brushless motor. Not had any problems to date, seems nice and strong (although I should probably buy one as a spare!)
Could be that the narrower belts aren't quite suited to spinning weapons.