If you’re like most people, you don’t want to pay more money than you have to. It makes sense to open the windows instead of turning on the air conditioning, or cut out coupons from the Sunday paper, or even buy items out of season to try and get the best price possible. However, spending as little money as possible isn’t always the best decision.
There should be a direct correlation between the amount you’re willing to spend and how important your purchase is. A cheaper brand of coffee filter in the break room or cut price flooring in the office might make little difference in employee morale and no difference to the quality of your product.
You can’t skimp, however, on the truly important things. You wouldn’t look for cheap brain surgery or a low quality car seat for your baby. Your motion control system is no different. Well, it’s not a brain or a baby, but it is important enough that you shouldn’t consider saving a few bucks at the cost of quality and reliability.
If you work in packaging or manufacturing, your motion control system is the heart of your business. You want to make sure that your machinery is running in peak condition to ensure efficiency and eliminate unnecessary downtime. A dirty servo with a questionable past sold on eBay by “UpstandingCitizen37” just doesn’t cut it.
Who knows where that servo has been? We constantly see servos that have been patched up by Mr. Fix-it or your friendly neighborhood handy man that resemble something that Dr. Frankenstein might have made in his spare time on the occasional Sunday afternoon. Some shoddy soldering here, a little duct tape there, things slightly out of place, a real mess in general. You might think that a little cosmetic damage is worth getting a deal on a servo, but the damage might not stop at the surface, and running a defective servo can become a huge, expensive problem.
Sure, you can find what appear to be great deals on industrial servo motors, but be careful. If you see a cheap servo motor with a price tag that seems too good to be true, the alarm bells should immediately start ringing in your head.
You get what you pay for. Some things are frivolous enough that you can get away with saving a little money. You can raid the bargain bin for clothes or slightly damaged appliances, but you don’t want to cut corners on your motion control system.
If you just can’t get over the allure of a cheap servo motor, just remember that low price isn’t the complete cost of that servo. There are hidden costs that come with cheap servo motors.
- You’re wasting the money spent on a servo that will potentially fail on you in the near future.
- That defective servo can end up causing more damage to your machinery, leading to costly repairs.
- You will have to purchase a new servo, or get a factory reman on your old servo.
- There’s the total cost of all downtime that could have been avoided.
In the end, that cheap servo motor wasn’t really a savvy purchase, but an expensive time bomb instead. Next time that you’re looking for a replacement servo for your Indramat system, skip the bargain bin servo and get it done right the first time. We have charter flights available for quick on-site support. Contact us today!