Total agreement. Cherry completely changed how I do ribs too.

$8 leveling feet changed everything for me @baker.simon. My first bench wobbled so bad I had to shove matchbooks under one leg. Second bench I spent like $50 on some fancy system. Total waste. Third one just used those cheap metal feet from the big box store. Screwed them right into the leg bottoms. Done in ten minutes.

Cast iron vs forged steel, maybe that's why it chipped.

Wait, did you mention Chicago? Ive worked with vendors in Chicago before and yeah they always try to gloss over the bad stuff with shiny slides. The thing is, most vendors contract language actually requires them to report SLA breaches if they hit a certain threshold, but they bury that in the fine print. So if youre not pulling your own numbers before the meeting, youre basically letting them control the story. I usually run a quick audit on the key metrics an hour before the call just so I can catch any gaps theyre hoping Ill miss. Its a pain but it beats sitting through a sales pitch dressed up as a quarterly review.

Did you catch that article in Elevator World a few months back about the permanent magnet motors in MRLs? I read they're actually more efficient than old gearless setups because they don't lose as much energy to heat. That $8,000 savings sounds about right too, I've seen similar numbers on a couple of 8 stop jobs where they skipped the machine room build. The only thing I'd watch for is if the building has REALLY tall rises, then gearless still seems to win on torque for the high speed stuff.