Just wanted to mention, it is not good luck buy (I think of them as ebay), but two companies, "Famous Hobby", and Furuipu Composite Factory.
I believe they are either next door to each other or the same company.
In my research I found they cut many many parts for several other well known quad companies (I won't mention names)...
At one point we were getting lots of pressure to produce frames in carbon. We started doing carbon prototypes ourselves but the Carbon is nasty to cut in large amounts. So we decided to do a run of carbon parts through Furuipu against our better judgement.
The first couple of samples were ok, so we placed the order... hoping everything would be ok.
What we ended up with is $8,000.00 worth of junk, completely different than the samples. The arms, center plates, and everything else were so out of spec, the frame could not even be assembled correctly. I took measurements of the parts, sent pictures of how far off they were from my drawings, and they would respond with "Engineer say parts ok!".
They would not accept the parts for return, and we could not use the parts either. They only thing we could salvage was the landing gear. All of the guarantees of quality and tolerances specs agreed upon before payment, were completely ignored. Every email ended with "Engineer say parts ok!".
Their "engineer" finally insisted we should change all of our spacers to different lengths, then pick special for each frame, so that I could make the parts work (although this would not really work).
Can you imagine? Hundreds of frames with mismatched spacer lengths to account for randomly mismatched parts? Is this how they really think?
Now, the frames turn up on good luck buy with those special plastic mismatched spacers.. it's like a knife to the back.
So we ate $8000 AND got the designs stolen.
Anyone want carbon coasters shaped center plates? They can also be used to draw on sidewalks.
My advice, to any other frame companies out there, do not use "Famous Hobby", or "Furuipu Composite Factory", you will regret it.
Obviously we will never make this mistake again, but really we can only blame ourselves for being too trusting.
Tom
