Christmas toys ... an ongoing saga


Posted On: Saturday - January 7th 2017 8:55AM MST
In Topics: 
  Cheap China-made Crap  Curmudgeonry

One of the Christmas toys mentioned a week back or so is a remote control vehicle. We broke out the swapped-out truck long after the exchange at the store. You wouldn't believe this next part.

There are two motions - driving wheels forward/backward (via motor drive) and front wheels right/left (via solenoid, most likely - just on/off motion). The latter motion, the steering that is, is backwards on the replaced truck! Now, first thought is, OK we can hold the remote control backwards, but, no, then other motion is backwards - of course.

I took apart the control, expecting something simple, like the plastic tiny joystick that touches the actual switch was installed wrong. Nope, it's not that. The small PC board inside is very neat and orderly with 4 micro momentary-contact switches. All I can think of is one of them is supposed to be normally-open and one normally-closed and a wrong one was installed. A friend suggested that maybe the logic in the small chip was wrong (flashed wrong?).

Possibly the problem is in the truck, but I didn't have a small enough screwdriver. Even so, I'm not sure what could be backwards mechanically, or is a solenoid installed wrong.

Q/A for the win! (I could tell you stories from the family about Chinese Q/A. It's done a bit differently over there, as Mr. Lee explains below:

How do you run your Quality Assurance Department so cheaply, Mr. Lee?



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