Chinese lights

[bricummo]

I just actually ordered 16 x 90W moving heads and 4 x 7x12 might I washes via Aliexpress.

 

Good thing iso to search, then check feedback and different variations on spec and then open up a dialog with these sellers, most use WhatsApp so you can chat with them well.

 

I bought one first as a sample and after haggling they did me an amazing deal for what I got, sample arrived in 4 days, I was totally happy with it and the remaining 1t arrived within 14 days.

 

They even helped with the duty costs.

 

I can't say for everyone but my experience has been a positive one and now I have 20 movers for a bargain!

[paulears]

I think this matches my experience too.

[loudwill]

Great to hear that, do you know who it was you dealt with? do they have an ebay store/contact details handy?

 

Thanks :)

 

I just actually ordered 16 x 90W moving heads and 4 x 7x12 might I washes via Aliexpress.

 

Good thing iso to search, then check feedback and different variations on spec and then open up a dialog with these sellers, most use WhatsApp so you can chat with them well.

 

I bought one first as a sample and after haggling they did me an amazing deal for what I got, sample arrived in 4 days, I was totally happy with it and the remaining 1t arrived within 14 days.

 

They even helped with the duty costs.

 

I can't say for everyone but my experience has been a positive one and now I have 20 movers for a bargain!

[BenEdwards]

Make sure you optically isolate the DMX as a failure could short and send mains volts down the DMX cables (and possibly fly controller). You should do this anyway for intelligent fixtures. Make sure all DMX channels are independently isolated as some cheaper ones do it in pairs. The Transcension s4 is what we use.

[KevinE]

I've just had a chinese 'sharpy' in for repair, they're currently here (no connection).

Google brought me to this thread so apologies for resurrecting it.

 

ebay light

 

They're made by SONGXU.

 

The faults were pretty simple; a pan encoder wheel that had worked loose and crashed into the opto and broken them; and a mangled colour wheel stepper driver caused by the owner trying to fix the first fault.

 

On soak test the tilt encoder wheel worked loose and crashed into its sensor. No locking compound had been applied to the grub screws.

 

They appear very well built complete with colour touch screen and what seems to be an off-the-shelf SMPSU. Plenty of room inside. Light output is stunning from the 5R lamp.

 

One little faux pas are two powercons, an inlet for the mains-in, and...an inlet for the mains loop output. I could see a pair of mains leads being plugged in there by mistake <_<

 

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk1/kevvywevvywoo/5r_zpsfamnogob.jpg

[Nicktaylor]

I bought six direct having got the import thing sorted. As suggested above I had three with part of the yoke casing broken because there was not enough padding for shipping.

New parts were sent and they are great. Except the handbook was out one DMX channel at the end so zoom appeared not to work, but was one digit higher than I had setup for zero88

[medina]

I've been looking at Aliexpress for some LED fixtures, do you have to pay import taxes and VAT when they get into the UK?

[ImagineerTom]

Depending on the quantity ordered and luck you /may/ be lucky and not have to pay any charges, you'll probably have to pay some charges (most delivery firms pay the charge for you, then bill you plus a £20 processing fee) and you may well have to pay more than you expected to pay because the rate of duty & VAT is dependent on the category, currency and value the shipper writes on the form; I have had non-vat items charged VAT because the shipper "helpfully" put a different description on the customs documentation to try and minimise import duty rates for example. You should make your cost-benefit calculations based on paying 25% over the sale price (VAT, import duties, fees) then be pleasantly surprised if it costs you less.

 

Also note that the fees will vary from consignment to consignment depending again on what was written on the forms by the seller and whether your consignment was pulled out by customs for extra inspection/audit and re-valued; a consignment pulled up for assessment never seems to end up having the taxes reduced on it.

[bricummo]

Actually they are usually very Goodd with helping with customs charges.

 

They 'help' with the values in the forms shall we say, so much so that I ordered 16 movers and I think I paid around £200 in total for a BIG delivery.

[david.elsbury]

So they assist you to commit fraud? Cool. Wouldn't want to be you if I got found out ?

[paulears]

The customs form is worded "value" - the price you pay is NOT it's value. If the Royal Mail, for example lose a microphone I send to somebody (who paid me, for example £100), then they will only pay me what I paid for the item, and demand proof - so they consider it's value to be what I paid for it, not what I sell it for. This is enough for me to be comfortable with the declaration of value on the Chinese Imports I get. I cannot find any import duty/VAT regulations that indicate how the figure is calculated.

 

One thing to watch is that people like DHL, tend to deliver, then invoice you a couple of weeks later, while parcel force will not deliver until you pay.

[PaulN]

The customs form is worded "value" - the price you pay is NOT it's value. If the Royal Mail, for example lose a microphone I send to somebody (who paid me, for example £100), then they will only pay me what I paid for the item, and demand proof - so they consider it's value to be what I paid for it, not what I sell it for. This is enough for me to be comfortable with the declaration of value on the Chinese Imports I get. I cannot find any import duty/VAT regulations that indicate how the figure is calculated.

 

One thing to watch is that people like DHL, tend to deliver, then invoice you a couple of weeks later, while parcel force will not deliver until you pay.

 

See here

 

https://www.gov.uk/g...rade-statistics

 

This Go.UK link details , in great detail, how "value is calculated.

 

For duty : PRICE PAID + all freight and insurance costs to UK. ( Plus in some cases other indirect costs as listed)

 

For VAT: Above value plus all customs charges such as duty.

 

So if the documents customs use to calculate above have different values than what you actually paid, and you get caught ............

[paulears]

That's interesting - I didn't know that you pay VAT on the duty? That hasn't happened to me yet, it's normally 20% on the value, then 4% (for what I usually buy) on the value?

[Thos1000]

I have way too much experience with Chinese lighting devices. If your talking about the Zooms that I ended up with, they were a reverse engineered Clay Paky 1200 watt zoom. First problem was that I had to create my own fixture profile while not understanding the manual that came with the fixtures. There is supposed to be the ability to re home and lamp on and off function. I tried everything and could get it to work. It may have been the profile that I wrote but I couldn't change it mid season. The second issue was the voltage. China runs on 230 volt, Here in the states it ends up being 208 from three phase power, The manual said that the transformer was able to be re tap, it wasn't. So for ten years I ran them at a lower voltage than the fixture wanted to see. This made them pan and tilt much slower than originally designed, but I dealt with it. One of the stepper motors failed about 5 years in. The motor is no longer made by Moon stepper motor manufacture, which was the company name on the motor. I've contacted the fixture seller in China via email, phone call with and without a translator and a live person going back to where they were purchased and never got the correct stepper motor replacement. However I did receive 22 motors, 2 at a time that were completely wrong over the span of about 8 years.

 

If you buy them, get 10 extra belts for pan and tilt, 10 extra cold mirror reflectors and if you're hanging them faces down, buy some extra lenses. When the lamps explode it will instantly ruin your reflector and the first lens. Other than that I really enjoyed using these lights. I do know they 10 of them, with road cases for around $30,000.00. One of these fixtures from the real manufacture would have been over $15,000 a piece without the road case. For that reason I felt bad for using them. But they were there and I had to.

[paulears]

I think Thos experience is pretty typical, and if you gave those figures to an accountant and asked which deal is better, I'm pretty sure that the Chinese ones come off best. I had a discussion with my accountant about the Chinese products I was buying heavily and his conclusion was that I shouldn't consider them, even though expensive-ish, as assets. He suggested simply treating them as consumable items in the accounts, as they were really in the same category as discharge lamps. High value items with no residual value, ending up scrapped rather than repaired. In truth he's quite right.

 

For many of the big hire companies, the high value items make economic sense when balanced against use, but for a venue that is not in operation every night of the year, it's difficult to see how an investment in cutting edge products will ever make sense. My own venue is open 6 months of the year and then has perhaps 4-6 days operation each week. We need two followspots, and the cost of these, balanced against the use (and box office income) makes no sense at all. As a consequence, they want me to add them to the stock I provide and hire them, but to me, a ten grand outlay converts to a ridiculous hire charge that is simply too much - and I doubt I'll do anything with them when they sit in the store wasting floor space for half a year! The problems with the old ones (Chinese Golden Scan based) mean that 3 years is probably their real lifespan (ironic really when there is a Strand 765 in full working order in the room - but it's just not bright enough!)

 

I'm a total convert to buying from China. Of course there are loads of problems, some, like the stepper motor problem, simply unavoidable and terminal - but for many people, the benefits are many. The last big brands I bought in quantity were Mac 500s. People are still selling working ones on ebay for sensible money - so there is lifespan in return for cost, unlike the Chinese equipment - but does that really matter.

 

In panto this year, the quality, expensive hired in movers were a complete pain. Not the hire companies doing, I should add, but simply working for two shows a day, six days a week sucking in vast amount of pyro dust. It killed them. Almost every day one overheated. Calls to 'hoover out the movers' became more and more common, and couriers were doing good business ferrying spares around. I can't blame the fixtures either. Maybe it would have been cheaper to buy a container of clever Chinese lights, and supply loads of spares for the run and then sell the lot on ebay afterwards? A clean and a wipe over, then pass them on to people with less demanding productions. Some of the things we had hanging only did very standard lighting. Throwing a few breakups and highlighting different things in different colours. The only real requirement was brightness. Robe, Clay Paky and Martin now seem to concentrate on the really expensive fixtures for prestige, bug budget productions. Medium and small scale venues just don't have the budgets for a rig full of this kit any longer. All three of the big boys could easily do what the audio companies do - get a product made in China, badge it up and sell it cheap. Oddly LX companies just don't do that. Stranger when you consider Robe's background.