Good to see a magazine having the guts to offend advertisers by writing about the disgraceful quality of far too many manuals for woodworking power tools and machinery and to name some names. The August issue of Furniture & Cabinetmaking has an excellent article by Geoffrey Laycock. He has a health and safety background and goes through the requirements in some detail, which contrary to popular belief, are not designed to drown us in red tape but to keep us safe in practical ways.
He says the law requires manuals should be easy to read and have good illustrations, graphs and tables placed near the text to which they relate. They should deal with intended uses for a given piece of kit but also reasonably foreseeable misuses. Manuals should be on paper – not everyone has ready access to a computer – but should also be available on line in case paper versions are damaged or go missing. This applies to earlier machines as well as those currently being made and online versions should be updated where appropriate.
As to the names, the article is based on the personal experience of the author and a reader of the magazine, so the names quoted are limited in number. Record Power and particularly Axminster get a pat on the back which, in the latter case is specially commendable given that most of their kit is imported from China with, no doubt, woeful translations of equally inadequate originals. Manuals supplied with a Scheppach planer thicknesser, Hammer bandsaw and a SIP table saw are described as appalling. SIP and NMA Agencies (Scheppach) are essentially importers of other makers products (as are Hammer when it comes to bandsaws) and they are clearly failing in their duties. If Axminster can make the effort to get it right, so should they. Many Chinese imports are available from more than one supplier in the same or near identical form, so if you could check out the manuals on line who wouldn’t buy an Axminster labelled version over some other name with a rubbish manual even if it was a few quid cheaper?
Brickbats also go to Festool by name and the many other power tool makers with fiddly, often poorly written or translated little manuals with those horrible little fold out diagrams. From my experience, that also goes for Makita.
As I said earlier the names in the article are few, but I think the members of this forum have the collective experience to give a pretty good market wide view so that we can all make properly informed choices. While we can all benefit, I think this could be especially useful for the less experienced for whom proper instructions and safety advice are so vital. Thoughts anyone?
Jim
He says the law requires manuals should be easy to read and have good illustrations, graphs and tables placed near the text to which they relate. They should deal with intended uses for a given piece of kit but also reasonably foreseeable misuses. Manuals should be on paper – not everyone has ready access to a computer – but should also be available on line in case paper versions are damaged or go missing. This applies to earlier machines as well as those currently being made and online versions should be updated where appropriate.
As to the names, the article is based on the personal experience of the author and a reader of the magazine, so the names quoted are limited in number. Record Power and particularly Axminster get a pat on the back which, in the latter case is specially commendable given that most of their kit is imported from China with, no doubt, woeful translations of equally inadequate originals. Manuals supplied with a Scheppach planer thicknesser, Hammer bandsaw and a SIP table saw are described as appalling. SIP and NMA Agencies (Scheppach) are essentially importers of other makers products (as are Hammer when it comes to bandsaws) and they are clearly failing in their duties. If Axminster can make the effort to get it right, so should they. Many Chinese imports are available from more than one supplier in the same or near identical form, so if you could check out the manuals on line who wouldn’t buy an Axminster labelled version over some other name with a rubbish manual even if it was a few quid cheaper?
Brickbats also go to Festool by name and the many other power tool makers with fiddly, often poorly written or translated little manuals with those horrible little fold out diagrams. From my experience, that also goes for Makita.
As I said earlier the names in the article are few, but I think the members of this forum have the collective experience to give a pretty good market wide view so that we can all make properly informed choices. While we can all benefit, I think this could be especially useful for the less experienced for whom proper instructions and safety advice are so vital. Thoughts anyone?
Jim
