Holy worn tooling, Batman!!!!

Holy crap!!!! :eek::eek:

Really hard to tell, but those almost look like they were redesigned to be manufactured with a different process. The cradle looks different.

Regardless, that just shows the company has no QC whatsoever even on components people trust their lives to.

I mean, I've always hated that kind of jack stand, but that is INSANE.

No doubt. The effect of worn tooling should never be spotted by eye, even at close inspection. Ideally, tool wear is picked up by micrometers or even more sophisticated/accurate equipment before it even gets outside tolerances. You generally start seeing a statistical drift away from normal. That you can plainly see the wear from many feet away is preposterous and, IMO, obvious criminal negligence if someone were to get hurt.

I get that this is HF, and they won't control their products like high-end engineering/manufacturing companies might. But you have to at east check critical safety components.

What faith can one have that their sockets or impact tools have the right hardness and won't splinter upon impact and take an eye out? Whatever little faith I had in HF is totally gone now.

Still hard to tell, but it almost looks like the one on the left is a casting (:ack:) or forging (I hope!) that went through a secondary machining operation to clean up the geometry. The one on the right looks like it is skipping that secondary machining. You need much bigger radii if you don't machine it, so the geometry is crap now. The aspect ratio of that "O" is different, I believe.

Just a possibility.

Looking at the teeth, I can see where you're going. Looking at the saddle, it's hard to see how you get from the shape on the right to the one on the left through machining...but certainly not my area. :dunno:

It reminds me a lot more of counterfeit Chinese sports jersey where none of the colors, shapes, fonts, sizes, or placements are quite right. If someone's wearing one on the street among people wearing other types of clothing, the average Joe may not notice anything amiss. But, if someone is wearing that knock off at a game where most people are wearing the correct versions, even someone that doesn't have clue notices something is different about that one.

I must have not been clear. In short, we are in agreement. I'm not implying they stopped machining it. I'm saying they moved to new, crappy tooling so as to avoid machining altogether. Hence my pointing out that the font is different, pointing to a different tool.

Other than rags, sanding disc's, cheap batteries. Friend don't let their friend buy from Harbor Freight.

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/14/...stand-failure/


I'm sure there other things I didn't list that are fine from Harbor Freight, but if its failure can hurt you, don't try to save a few bucks on it at HF

You really have to go case by case and on reviews. I ended up buying my toolchests from HF because I just couldn't come up with a better alternative. They are WAY better built than any of the competition at that price point. Decently welded, thicker sheet metal, better casters, nice drawers, etc.

One thing that I have generally observed is that it seems that anything cast at HF seems to be a lot more likely to fail.

I thought this was funny. Hopefully it doesn't offend anyone.