I recently bought a Grizzly combo belt/disc sander. I am putting the
tool together and found there to be inaccurate references in the owners
manual, extra parts at the end of the assembly that were not described
in the manual and in some cases fairly thin details on a few items.
This wasn't too big a deal because in comparison to some other tools in
my shop, this one is pretty straight forward and doesn't require the
typical precision of, for example, a table saw. But in studying the
manual, I see it was written in 1992 and last updated in 1997. What is
the big deal to continuosly improve these materials and make them a
quality reference. I just can't believe the last update on this was
nine years ago. I have never had nirvana with an owner's manual but it
strikes as one of the easier things to work on that shows real customer
service.
Thank You!
I bought a Powermatic 54A jointer a couple of years ago and parts of the
manual didn't even resemble the machine. One section (rabbeting) had an
illustration of the wrong jointer and the text was missing. Part of the
assembly instructions and illustrations didn't match my jointer. I
contacted Powermatic (WMH) and initially got a snooty "We haven't had any
other complaints". A few days later I received a call from the product
manager assigned to the 54 series and he offered sincere apology.
Apparently they had recently updated the 54A and it's big brother 8" machine
and something went terribly wrong. He thanked me for pointing it out and
was clearly embarrassed. Since then I have accessed their .pdf of the book
and it has been fixed.
BTW - The machine itself is great!
HOWEVER, the thing that blew me away was the response I got from posting the
concern to this group. I got several responses inferring that I was a
griping, sniveling, overly-picky bastard who was attacking a high-quality
American product. Some even inferred that only pussies read manuals. I
spent 35 years in aerospace and have done quite a bit of tech and sales
writing. If we had produced errors like that manual exhibited we might have
had a product grounded until we figured out our maintenance and assembly
procedures. Producing clear technical instructions is not as easy as some
believe; but I strongly believe that the quality of a product's technical
documentation reflects on the quality of the product.
Glad that at least two of us can agree on that.
Ron
"warbler" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I recently bought a Grizzly combo belt/disc sander. I am putting the
> tool together and found there to be inaccurate references in the owners
> manual, extra parts at the end of the assembly that were not described
> in the manual and in some cases fairly thin details on a few items.
> This wasn't too big a deal because in comparison to some other tools in
> my shop, this one is pretty straight forward and doesn't require the
> typical precision of, for example, a table saw. But in studying the
> manual, I see it was written in 1992 and last updated in 1997. What is
> the big deal to continuosly improve these materials and make them a
> quality reference. I just can't believe the last update on this was
> nine years ago. I have never had nirvana with an owner's manual but it
> strikes as one of the easier things to work on that shows real customer
> service.
>