OK, you asked for it. I'll flame you. Well anyway add some to it. You are of course correct about longevity. However, two things that are important on a bench grinder are power and weight. Power is obvious. You don't want it slowing down when you push it. And with bench grinders, you are almost always pushing. Weight is not so obvious. It contributes to stability. A grinder that is even a tiny bit unbalanced will vibrate. And they all have some imbalance even if it is to small to detect by hand. The lighter the unit, the less damping it will have. That leads to out of round wheels and more frequent dressing. Not to mention that if left to itself, becomes dangerous. Thus you have the Baldor with heavy arbors, thick shafts, cast iron shrouds and even cast iron wheel covers. Just to add weight. Bolting down to a stable surface also helps. How much depends on the surface. Baldor stands have cast iron tops and weigh a ton. Imports are thin steel and weigh very little. A thick wood benchtop is a better bet.
The rikons that I have are not variable speed.I went looking at Rikon. The Rikon variable speed 80-800VS was in the Project Farm test and came in third, so I started there:
But of course I did some shopping around and found this too:
And I thought to myself, those look awfully similar, and the specs are identical. So I downloaded the manuals for these two grinders from Rikon and Menards respectively. Here they are side by side:
I'm pretty sure this means that if I don't mind losing two years of warranty, I can get the Rikon grinder branded as Masterforce and save $108.
Thoughts?
Yeah there is a decent reason lots of cheap imports won't last forever...they're pieces of ****.