AliExpress Opinions

macardoso

H-M Supporter - Silver Member
H-M Supporter - Silver Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2018
Messages
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Hi All,

I just had the world of AliExpress opened to me. I bought a DRO that came recommended by many and I am excited to see if it was worth what I paid. Now I am curious if I should be considering AliExpress a reasonable source for other tooling.

I buy most of my mid quality tools from Shars, with a handful of high end name brands where it is justified (test indicators for example). I have bought a lot of my indexable lathe tooling from eBay sellers who probably just drop ship from China, real cheap stuff but it all works perfectly. The biggest concerns I see are unknown quality.

Is AliExpress a viable supplier? The protection to the buyer seems comparable to eBay and the prices are quite good. I am ok with slow shipping for items I am not in immediate need of. Are there any tips I should know about? I've been told to mostly buy items that have high counts of being sold.

Thanks! Mike
 
I buy most of my Chinese carbide bits and bit holders from AliE, Banggood or eBay.
 
I find AliExpress to be a good source. Some failure to deliver. Most long delay to delivery. A fair amount of utter misrepresentation with stainless steel arriving as chromed plastic etc. I consider shopping there an adventure and I don't buy a load of anything I have not sampled. I love shopping there more often than I hate it.

Ali-Express and Ali-Baba have lots of storefronts on e-Bay and Amazon that you would not have recognized last month and you will recognize them now.
 
I bought my DRO there and lots of other tooling. I also buy the on eBay alot but lately tend to go to Ali first. My biggest problem is communication. Lots gets lost in translation. But overall it is good. I do trust Banggood all that much for the reason of bad reviews on them.

Michael
 
Thanks so much for the feedback. Do you guys have any sellers you might recommend for general shop tooling (mill and lathe)?
 
I've used Ali and BG for some purchases where 1. I wasn't in a hurry. 2. The price was significantly cheaper.

But to be perfectly honest, I will be curbing much of my purchases based on the product being from china. It is time for everyone to step up and support manufacturing in whatever country they reside in. If it just isn't available anywhere but from china then I may choose to go without or hold my nose and buy it.
 
When I got into machining as a hobby, 20 years after I sold my business, I assumed I would be using a lot of HSS and brazed carbide. Then I discovered that there had been some changes in the world of inserted tooling. I took a chance and spent $20 on some turning tools and inserts from Aliexpress. I was sold. I have been able to fully tool my lathe and mill with tooling I could have never afforded. For two or three hundred dollars I have purchased tooling that would have cost thousands from the big names. Would I have preferred to buy domestic? Yes. Do I feel bad about having bought Chinese for my hobby shop? No.
 
Yes it works well if you're not in a hurry and you can deal with the occasional disappointment. I would love to buy all domestic and for some things I do. But when the price differential is 50:1 I need to remember this is a hobby and if stuff doesn't perform as well or last as long as the premium I may have to just deal with it.

I just ordered an OXA QCTP from eBay and was (so far) pleasantly surprised that it came from All Industrial Tool Supply based right here in California. Ordering from Ali Express might have saved me 10 bucks but not having to wait, and doing business with someone who I can easily communicate with is worth the small premium. They have the primo stuff too if I hit the lottery so I think I'll be using them again (eBay price was less than their website BTW).

Mr. Whoppee has it right about the inserts though, hard to beat the AliExpress pricing.

Cheers,

John
 
I've used aliexpress quite a lot over the last 2 years. If I can wait it is almost always cheaper than Amazon or Ebay. I have only been shafted a few times, i'd guess i'm happy with 90% of what i purchase but I do the research and always look at the volume/order count as an indicator of the customer base. A lot of these guys just make a new "store" if they get bad reviews. Keep you expectations for customer service low and check the reviews for indications on how things are packed when shipped. The biggest problem I've seen is the crappy packaging. A lot of the time the items survive but if they have a reputation for bad packaging you may want to pick a different vendor. I've bought a ton of carbide, tooling, electronics components (buttons, commodity chips, smd resistors etc). Anything expensive I may go with Amazon for the return policy and amazing customer service. One hint about Amazon is that you should buy from Amazon as the seller whenever possible. They have most of their problems with 3rd party sellers. If you do buy 3rd party look at the seller ratings. If it is breakable you may want to stick with Shars since they do a good job with QA and packaging (but you pay more for it). Something like a toolpost holder isn't going to break in shipping. Final word is that if you need accuracy you are rolling the dice. I ordered some things like er16 shafts/er32 collet blocks from a few different vendors and the difference in quality is striking but the price points do not diverge that much. My recent roll of the dice was a gerardi type 5" vise. The packaging was total garbage and it arrived with all the parts clearly clattering around for most of the trip and the side of the MDF box almost completely busted out. The vise seems to have survived ok and while I initially thought it had issues with perpendicularity it turned out to be my mill column alignment. I paid $380 for it. Shars had the 6" version for sale for 375 and shipping was $75. The 5" is actually too big for me and I didn't need the 6" girth but I think I would have bought it from Shars if they had the 5" version.
 
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