All of them are bang on accurate

Good for you. But I'd rather not spend my money on copycats or even downright IP thieves. That is not to say they can't make good tools in China, they most assuredly can. But most of what BG sells is not in that category as far as I know.

Whoa; hang on there cowboy.  Banggood stuff is good and bad.  A lot of "American Branded" Power Tools come off the same assembly line in China.  I have a few Vieko Branded and Drillpro Branded tools purchased through Banggood and they are good tools.  They are affordable for those who can't afford a Woodpecker (I own a bunch of Woodpecker stuff) or a TSO ( I love my TSO Jigs) jig or tools.  The fit and finish may be somewhat "off" but none the less work fine. You can pick up very cheaply, clamps that are knock-offs from a certain German Power Tools manufacturer that are designed to work with the MFT/3. 

Like I already wrote: I do not doubt that quality can be had from China (or BG for that matter). Not at all. However, the manner in which they treat IP is not to my liking. And I certainly don't want to spend a whole lot of time on vetting tools when it comes to that aspect before I buy them. That's why I avoid sites like BangGood and Alibaba. I am sure there are products on there that are "kosher" and of good quality, but it is not worth the hassle to me. However, that is just my personal feeling, not necessarily an example I expect others to follow.

To quote Rob Lee in another recent threat on this forum [1]:

By and large, companies can no longer play intellectual property whack-a-mole effectively. Frankly - it's consumers that have the power to reward or discourage behaviour.

[1] https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/various-woodworking-crafts-topics/site-that-sells-lots-of-patent-infringed-tools-added-to-notorious-list/

Snip.
TSO (and WP but mainly TSO) did some serious R&D there recently and they rightly have patent protection to recoup their costs.

Patent protection is of little to no use to small fish like WP, etc. in North America if the offenders are located in Asia. Even bigger fish can't do much about patent infringement, and only the really big ones have the stick strong and long enough to do something. SawStop won Bosch in the finger-saving lawsuit partly because the case was heard in the States.

Quote from: mino on March 09, 2022, 02:17 PM

Snip.
TSO (and WP but mainly TSO) did some serious R&D there recently and they rightly have patent protection to recoup their costs.

Patent protection is of little to no use to small fish like WP, etc. in North America if the offenders are located in Asia. Even bigger fish can't do much about patent infringement, and only the really big ones have the stick strong and long enough to do something. SawStop won Bosch in the finger-saving lawsuit partly because the case was heard in the States.

True.
But bashing someone for making and selling a copy of a design which is not patent protected is equally wrong. Yet is is done very often in the racist/supremacist assumption that "because it was made by Chinese it must be an illegal copy".

Reality is, almost all power tools bar the specials like Domino, fall into the category of being a "copy" of someone's original idea a couple decades ago.
Not to mention hand tools or measuring instruments which have mostly thousand year old designs. The original of which some were first made in China or in Egypt before the whole "western civilisation" was a thing.

IMO it is very important to distinguish
 - someone selling a verbatim copy of a well-known but NOT patented/protected thing (copyright claims can come here)
 - someone selling a product which has patent/copyright protection and so would be illegal to sell
      - this being a global patent (is there such a thing even ?)
      - this being a local patent, valid only in the specific market

 - and an abolutely desirable action of someone selling a product based on a design of a competitor that had its patents expire
     => doing this is what forms the basis of a market economy, by the way

And a completely separate category are fakes of all kinds - these are the worst from the moral perspective. The reason it is worst that it confirms active malice and abuse. I personally have zero tollerance for that.


For the patents, it is good to remember that the US economy was built on not respecting British patents ... What goes around, comes around.
Selling stuff which is patent-protected in e.g. US by a China eshop with shipping to US: BAD. Selling the same thing to South Sudan which may not have mutual IP-protection treaty with the US: Absolutely OK in my view.

Before this discussion derails in a direction that presumably was not the intention of the OP I'll let this be my last post in this thread.

There is no "racist/supremacist assumption" on my side (at least not that I am aware of). I'd like to make it quite clear that is definitely not my intention at all. It is not how I feel about Chinese people or anyone else. That is not what I stand for.

Like I wrote: to me that is not the same as not wanting to buy anything made in China. I do buy Chinese stuff. But when it comes to obvious knock-offs or violations of whatever ethics or legal protection (as far as I can reasonably discern), yes then I do prefer not to buy it.

True.
But bashing someone for making and selling a copy of a design which is not patent protected is equally wrong. Yet is is done very often in the racist/supremacist assumption that "because it was made by Chinese it must be an illegal copy".

Reality is, almost all power tools bar the specials like Domino, fall into the category of being a "copy" of someone's original idea a couple decades ago.
Not to mention hand tools or measuring instruments which have mostly thousand year old designs. The original of which some were first made in China or in Egypt before the whole "western civilisation" was a thing.

IMO it is very important to distinguish
 - someone selling a verbatim copy of a well-known but NOT patented/protected thing (copyright claims can come here)
 - someone selling a product which has patent/copyright protection and so would be illegal to sell
      - this being a global patent (is there such a thing even ?)
      - this being a local patent, valid only in the specific market

 - and an abolutely desirable action of someone selling a product based on a design of a competitor that had its patents expire
     => doing this is what forms the basis of a market economy, by the way

And a completely separate category are fakes of all kinds - these are the worst from the moral perspective. The reason it is worst that it confirms active malice and abuse. I personally have zero tollerance for that.


For the patents, it is good to remember that the US economy was built on not respecting British patents ... What goes around, comes around.
Selling stuff which is patent-protected in e.g. US by a China eshop with shipping to US: BAD. Selling the same thing to South Sudan which may not have mutual IP-protection treaty with the US: Absolutely OK in my view.

^that, absolutely.

Good for you. But I'd rather not spend my money on copycats or even downright IP thieves. That is not to say they can't make good tools in China, they most assuredly can. But most of what BG sells is not in that category as far as I know.

Wow
Good that you clarified that your opinion is limited to "as far as you know"...
Some of their stuff is actually more sophisticated than the "inspiration", and some seem to be direct replicas (really bad, if the original is patented, I agree). However, squares and such are such a fundamental idea that I would not consider the maker of another similar product a copycat unless you refer to the colour
As per quality, you will not know unless you try it. All that I have acquired from BG are close to similar NA products.

Apology for starting this “heated” discussion. that was not my intention at all

Before this discussion derails in a direction that presumably was not the intention of the OP I'll let this be my last post in this thread.
...

Point taken and apologies if was seen as directed at your posts or intentions. It was not meant such.

I purposefully made a general comment reacting to the narrative that seems to permeate some of these threads. I simply do not like it as it smells with the notion that (insert country of choice) is out there to fake the world and shall be summarily despised for such. That in my view is the same notion that admonishes various people just based on a randomly chosen property of theirs.

Reality is that the Shanghai and other manufacturing hubs in China are these days THE manufacturing and invention powerhouses. They are simply BETTER than any western hubs in their ability to iterate on designs. They are still not that good on greenfield R&D but even there they are learning fast. These are smart folks. Let's not kid ourselves.

This, automatically, makes them an economical threat to the developed countries. It does. Pretending they are a bunch of cheats will not help us here. They have a lot of excellent engineers there. If we keep pretending being "superior" they would just burry us economically with their raw skills and know-how.

I won't sacrifice hard working tool makers to thieves stealing designs and selling me tools on the cheap.

I wouldn't want my hard work undermined like this.