Buy American, Pro-Line post

[WoodiE]

Proline shared a good video yesterday showing the effects of sending jobs overseas and encouraging people to buy American goods. Something I can certainly agree that ALL of us could, should, need to do.

In this hobby it seems nearly everything is made overseas, but after seeing the video and Pro-Lines post, it got me thinking. Who else in our R/C hobby is American made? Feel free to reply with any companies that are American made!

Pro-Lines post:

For over 30 years Pro-Line has been Made in America. We have committed, invested and developed a world class manufacturing facility with a team of Americans dedicated to delivering Quality Products. We take great pride in being Innovative, by designing and developing our products in house but we don’t stop there! We also prototype, tool up our molds in our own tool room and test raw materials in our manufacturing facility. We do all this to provide you with the Best, the most trusted and highest quality RC performance products that improve our consumer’s RC experience!

American Made RC Companies:

• CowRC *forum sponsor*
• Full Force RC *forum sponsor*
• KillerRC *forum sponsor* (Assembled in the USA. LED bulbs are from overseas)
• Team FastEddy *forum sponsor* (Bearings are from overseas)
• Axis RC
• Bartolone Racing
• Fast Lane Machine
• Gear Head RC
• Great Assembly
• Kimbrough Racing Products
• Lunsford Racing
• MIP
• Mayhem Engineering
• Modified RC
• Motorsaver Filters
• Motoworx Racing
• Outerwears
• Parma
• Proline Racing
• RPM RC Products
• Robinson Racing Products
• T-Bone Racing
• Tekin *Motors made overseas. ESC components from overseas - designed and assembled in USA!
• T1ERC
• Team Chase
• Threshold
• Turtle Racing
• Unlimited Engineering
• Vanquish

 

[mike_inwood]

My wife lived in America for most of her life and this video is so true. I'm Canadian but when I order my rc parts I'm going to try and buy only American parts. I'll so my part to help you guys I'm the usa. I drive long haul until recently and I've seen just about every state and talked with a lot of good peoples loosing there jobs to places in China Mexico ect.... There doing the same in canada as well. A lot of chinamexico outsourcing. It's sad really

 

[robmob]

I do my best to support Made In America in this hobby when possible. Can't put a price on quality and supporting companies who refuse to outsource outside the USA.

Off the top of my head here is a list of companies I support.

Vanquish
Turtle Racing
Threshold
Modified RC
Team Chase
Proline
Bartolone Racing

 

[Alexander_0_1]

Fast lane machine.

 

[WoodiE]

CowRC
KillerRC
RPM RC Products

are also USA made!

 

[Nitrotrout]

Unlimited Engineering

Great Assembly

RPM

Aj's Machine

T-Bone Racing

Motorsaver Filters

Outerwears

Lunsford Racing

MIP

 

[WoodiE]

I've updated the first post with all the companies listed so far. Great seeing the list of great companies to support!

 

[robmob]

Axis RC

Bar none the best stand for the hpi baja and Losi 5ive.

 

[HPIguy]

I'd like to add that in addition to to being made in the US, Vanquish truly cares about their customers and the future of the hobby as well. There was a thread on another forum in which I was razzing Tom from VP about the cost of the rebuild kits for the VVD axles compared to other companies like MIP, I even put a smiley letting him know I was only half serious. He replied almost immediately, cut the price by 50%, and I just checked and they're still $9.99, vs the $19.99 that they were. I never expected that, and didn't even need them, but bought two kits based on principle alone.

In addition, there are also a lot of small companies that cater to the crawler / scaler market that are US owned, that crank out some seriously nice stuff.

Off the top of my head

Mayhem Engineering
Motoworx Racing
Locked Up RC
Gear Head RC
T1ERC

 

[WoodiE]

Good looking list of companies to be supporting guys, even a few I've not heard of but will be checking out for sure.

 

[sv250]

I'm glad to see that list is all top notch products. I have products from most of them. I guess when it comes to quality, the Chineese 12 cents an hour advantage is out the window.

 

[HPIguy]

^^Yes sir! There's a saying that really holds true in our hobby; The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. Or, just see alpines quote in my sig.

 

[WoodiE]

Bumping because this deserves all the attention it can get!

 

[hamz9561]

This great. Just installed a set of MIP splined driveshafts on my SCX-10. Glad to hear they're made here.

 

[Nitrotrout]

Bump^^
Few more to add to the list:

Full Force RC
http://www.fullforcerc.com/
Parma
http://www.parmapse.com/
Kimbrough Racing Products
http://kimbroughracingproducts.com/store/index.php
Robinson Racing Products
http://www.robinsonracing.com/
tekin
http://www.teamtekin.com/?ref=rccoh.com

 

[robmob]

Team FastEddy

Bearings are from overseas like pretty much all other RC bearing suppliers, but everything else they do is Made in the USA.

 

[WoodiE]

Team FastEddy

Bearings are from overseas like pretty much all other RC bearing suppliers, but everything else they do is Made in the USA.

I did not know that. I knew the bearings was from overseas but I thought the majority of the other gear was as well.

 

[HPIguy]

Tekin isn't all American either, their ESC's are assembled here, and that's it.

 

[Tekin Prez]

I always enjoy these threads because it gives me a chance to tell people that we are a family owned and operated business that designs its own products.

Our circuit boards are designed and loaded in the US. We do have to say "Made in America" 'using foreign and domestic components' because components like caps and resistors that all electronics use are not made in the US.

Our housings are molded right here in Idaho and our packaging, stickers and manuals are all printed in the NW. Even our silicone wire is made in the US and is truly engineered and superior to the loose strand wire that is common. Put a critical eye on our servo plug or power switch... we flat use more expensive, higher quality parts. It's the things that you do not notice because they are not a problem that really make us different from the OEM world.

Motors are a similiar story and are our engineering, design and tooling. You have never seen our motor or any component of our motor in another brand. However, the motors are very labor intensive and simply cannot be made here for obvious reasons. The real difference is we have a partner instead of fill out an order form and choose a color. We are able to react quickly to problems because we build them daily in fairly small batches rather than large OEM orders a few times a year.

Fortunately copying has not been an issue because we spend about double what many brands do making our motors. Noticed that typically you can melt the solder off the front Y plate in our motors, clean it up, and it still runs decent? How many brands have you seen with shorted windings or a dead rotor after a mild overheat... How many bearings do you really see fail? Full of gunk perhaps, but blow?

Copying is a problem with our circuit designs. Fortunately they cannot steal our software or make any changes to it so they have to come up with their own magic. They also tend to use much lower grade components and alter the layout so the final result is not even close to the same. We think this may be where some of these rumors get started. They say it is a form of flattery, but we are not amused

Tekin products are designed by Tekin in the US and are only under the Tekin brand, Period

Jim Campbell
President
Tekin, Inc.

 

[HPIguy]

Ask anyone that knows me, and they'll tell you I love my pro4, and I mean love it, it's a beast of a motor.

But that doesn't somehow magically make the box not say made in China on it though, just clearing up the facts is all.