Some People Never Learn

[need4reebs]

regardless of who is right or who is wrong, or who did this or who didnt do that...nobody forced the people who sent their money for a product that wasnt built yet....after the first ever pre-order that went bad here on AO people still paid for a slot on the next pre-order? how many pre-orders have their been that have gone wrong? more than a few, right? alot of the pre-order issues could have been stopped after the first one went bad if nobody bought a spot on the second pre-order? think about this if your so smart, and you never make a mistake, why are you pissed off about another pre-order gone bad that you lost money on when you got burned on the last pre-order??

im not saying you to anybody in particular, but if you got burned on more than one pre-order then if something goes wrong you should get partial blame, cause once again nobody forced you to be the #1 slot on the next pre-order?

why not cut PTP some slack, they made a mistake on 2 of the recent projects they were involved with, but from what I've seen and heard from PTP, they have tried to make it right and/or did make it right for any issues i had which werent many at all...so as a customer m happy with PTP.

thats just my 2 cents about all this stuff

[rx2]

Guys...PTP has been making paintguns for what...years? Decades?

Then look at what else they are involved with...making grenade launchers for the military.

They are supposed to be the "experts" in this area and have fallen down on the last 2 products they have put out. They have made promises that they have not kept and then have passsed the buck to others.

Would this really fly for a military product? Wonder what would happen if they cut a grenade launcher too thin? Odds are someone would lose a hand and maby their life.

This is essentially mirrors my take on the situation. They are government contractors. On one hand, you can argue that this is the reason that they are producing sub-par specialty products for a niche market - they simply don't have the resources to devote. On the other hand, though, this should at least mean that they are somewhat competent, and would know better than to put out a questionable design, and a final product that fails, and then repeat the same process a few years later. Sure, lowest bidder, and all that, but at the very least, one would imagine that they would look objectively at the fiasco that was the MM2K9 project, and the say to themselves "if we are going to get involved with something like this again, we had better make sure that we get it right the first time."

I was one of the pre-orders for the MM2K9. At the time, I wasn't really concerned about timeliness, as I was busy with too many other things to be actively concerned. To be honest, I haven't even assembled the thing, although I am not sure I will even bother at this point. Looking back, the whole thing was just handled badly, and too much blame placed on the customer. After all of the runaround, and shipping of essentially incomplete products, I think PTP's commitments were not completely fulfilled. Sure, they tried to rectify things with the spacers, but that created new problems for some.

"Oh, but PTP didn't design or mill it! It isn't their fault!" Again, they knew, or should have known what they were getting into. I have worked with people who do custom fabrications, prototyping, and multi-source projects. It's really almost a priori that, if you are going to attach your name to the end product, that you make sure that all of your ducks are in a row. You don't just accept a design willy-nilly, with no beta, QC, or prototyping prior to full-scale production, especially from someone who has caused a headache in the past. Mistakes can fall through the cracks, but if you are producing a product, in good faith, that is solely the fruit of outsourcing, you are the one who assumes responsibility. I realize that there is a certain fraternal sense in the paintball community, and a pass given to many things as a result. We are talking about a real company, with real contracts, who needs to be treated just as any other company out there. When a car company gives you a lemon, you get your money back, or go class action. You don't say "oh well, the engineer goofed, but that CEO is a good guy, so shame on me".

That being said, Forrest has, at the least, put some effort forth to try to appease customers. It may be too little, too late - at least as far as any trust or good standing goes. Let's just hope they QC a little better with their products that actually go "boom".

[Cokrkilr]

I missed the part on the o ring

After all, one thread was like 20+ pages, the other like 14-15... I have stuff to do

And yes I do get the analogy now that I am up to date on the o ring issue, haha. Ill come to a compromise for the sake of at least it was the cocker guys this time, it was 50% horrible design, 50% horrible quality control

[GoatBoy]

None taken at all.

I do agree that ptp did produce the final product, its ptp's name on the line. But from the thread that was linked all I really saw was a designer that shaved off too much metal for.any type of tolerance in the milling process... I mean say 75% of the time the machinist loads the block of aluminum dead nuts, there is still a 25% chance it could be off by .00123456789".... and that would bring up the problem they are having now.

If the designer would have left a mm more in his design on the sides of.the body this problem could have been averted to a certain degree... or at least possibly take the failure rate down to 1/30, instead of half of them. That's all I was getting at

That's just the feedneck part, which indeed is a design issue and should have been caught at multiple levels.

But now if you go back to the thread, you find that the milling underneath the barrel tube is too aggressive, and the front block o-ring is exposed.

That's what I was referring to with the whole "part A is supposed to meet up with part B" bit. This is high school shop class hijinx sort of stuff.


It reminds me of an experience I had in ... high school shop class. The teacher had a bunch of busywork for us to run on the machines, like the previous learning assignments. Cut this, do that, whatever. So everybody set about mindlessly doing their assignments.

I was apparently the only one that stopped and looked at the entirety of all the tasks and realized they were not just independent busy work, but were meant to fit together. So when I did my tasks, I didn't just do what was asked, I made sure things were cut so that they actually fit. I couldn't do things perfect (in fact to this day I'm really quite terrible at manual labor and making things), but I could err in a way that would mate up with other parts properly. If I cut one part too deep, I cut the mating part a little more shallow. I never redid any parts.

Toward the end of the project, the teacher let the cat out of the bag and everybody assembled their projects, and one by one, each one was graded. The assembled contraptions (turns out it was a desk lamp) were pretty hilarious. The joints were all over the place, arms leaning and twisted like dying trees. I think a few guys scrambled to redo their work, but highest grade I recall was in the 80's, maybe low 90's.

Then I brought mine up to be graded.

The teacher looked at it. Turned it. Looked at it again. Adjusted his glasses. Looked at it some more...

I was the only one to walk away with a perfect 100.

Sometimes, I wonder what became of some of my classmates.

[wetwrks]

Guys...PTP has been making paintguns for what...years? Decades?

Then look at what else they are involved with...making grenade launchers for the military.

They are supposed to be the "experts" in this area and have fallen down on the last 2 products they have put out. They have made promises that they have not kept and then have passsed the buck to others.

Would this really fly for a military product? Wonder what would happen if they cut a grenade launcher too thin? Odds are someone would lose a hand and maby their life.

[Cokrkilr]

None taken at all.

I do agree that ptp did produce the final product, its ptp's name on the line. But from the thread that was linked all I really saw was a designer that shaved off too much metal for.any type of tolerance in the milling process... I mean say 75% of the time the machinist loads the block of aluminum dead nuts, there is still a 25% chance it could be off by .00123456789".... and that would bring up the problem they are having now.

If the designer would have left a mm more in his design on the sides of.the body this problem could have been averted to a certain degree... or at least possibly take the failure rate down to 1/30, instead of half of them. That's all I was getting at

[GoatBoy]

The guy milling them is just doing what he's told to pay his bills. Sure a QC check would be nice. But if I came to you and said, "mill these exactly like this" and I were a paying customer with thousands in other peoples money... would you do it? Yes

I sort of agree with the first part, the second part... is forthcoming. But yes, the machinist probably just executed exactly per instructions, so he's probably no more to blame than the tools he used.

Sure ptp may do something to save their name in this deal, but I feel it isn't their fault and it should come at the cost of the designer... not a company just because they are big and powerful.

But I guess that's why jobs like this go to the big dogs, they have the means to correct a multi unit screw up....

You know, if I have to sit there and listen to how I don't know anything about some company because I wasn't around paintball in the 90's (which isn't true, but that doesn't mean I don't have to listen to it), you'd think that said company would have piled up enough wisdom to avert obvious disasters in 2013 on gun parts that... well, probably do go back longer than I've been in paintball.

If the machinist didn't know that part A was supposed to meet up with part B, that's fine, he's just the machinist.

But PTP are supposed to be the experts in the matter. They're supposed to know what's going on. They're the ones with all this history that goes back to .45 frames and detentes in the 90's and blah blah blah blah blah blah double triggers blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

I mean, if you're going to stamp one of your pet brands on it... QC'ing the product isn't optional. I don't see RRFireblade's name on the final product. I see Armson.

(No offense to you Cokrkilr; love your SN by the way.)

[going_home]

Tough Breaks

Just read a few more pages.

I can almost hear the footsteps of the towns people coming with torches.

I probably wouldnt find this as interesting if I had gotten a refund for the proprietary sear pin I paid for

before they finally said they were included, and for the extra t shirt I purchased.






Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

[Cokrkilr]

Yeah, but ptp didn't design the body, someone else did and got them involved to make them... that's what I'm trying to say. The designer should have put this through the paces and make.sure his design was spot on before going to ptp...

And I do believe someone thought milling things that close to popping through was a way to save weight or else why do it? Cuz it sure isn't attractive milling...

[Fred]

Calling a cocker body complete with backblock and full tube enclosure, not to mention full length, cut for weight savings is a laugh.

Its sloppy, clearly wasn't tested well, and again - like the MM2k9 - is a design that is lacking in the complete thought department.

If the issue is only because the feednecks weren't centered... um. seriously? Blaming 1 failure on another as justification and/or explanation?

Gimme my original AGD spec parts any day over anything from PTP.

[Cokrkilr]

I think you are talking about the micromag and I'm talking about this cocker issue...

[zondo]

I don't think any of the milling was done for weight savings... in fact, they left plenty of meat on there to get them milled with some nice cuts and designs, but no one has taken that plunge yet.

I'm still eagerly awaiting the fix for the velocity issue.

[Cokrkilr]

I feel this lies in the designers hands. Not the manufacturer. Yes, lightweight is nice, but really? That one extra pass of the mill for .000xx weight savings was the difference between a failure and a success.

The guy milling them is just doing what he's told to pay his bills. Sure a QC check would be nice. But if I came to you and said, "mill these exactly like this" and I were a paying customer with thousands in other peoples money... would you do it? Yes

Sure ptp may do something to save their name in this deal, but I feel it isn't their fault and it should come at the cost of the designer... not a company just because they are big and powerful.

But I guess that's why jobs like this go to the big dogs, they have the means to correct a multi unit screw up....

[Drix]

Well PTP should get out and stay out of the paintball industry

I could not disagree more. My visit to PTP was an amazing experience and really hit home about how much Forrest and Tracy are dedicated to the sport. IMO, they've forgotten how to work with paintball players in lieu of their bigger and more lucrative government contracts. If I were them I'd build a working prototype first, and say "This is what you're going to have" and leave it like that instead of re-designing on the fly.

[Redic]

Well PTP should get out and stay out of the paintball industry

Sad to see they screwed over more players