"New" Z Chassis?

Interesting. Here are two photos, the first is a chassis we sell by a world class master craftsman. While at NTS in July the owner of Rokuhan purchased one of these from us at our vendor booth. The second photo arrived in my inbox today. By all appearances someone saved themselves hundreds of hours of research and developement. At least I can clearly see a difference in the quality of materials used.

This is the link that I received today:
http://www.rokuhan.com/english/news/2011/09/z-gauge-power-unit.html

 

OK, this is just plain tacky... not to mention, frightening. I saw Lajos' chassis running around Rokuhan tight radius track at their booth. To show just how grateful they were to Zthek for the demo opportunity, they filched the design. Of course, as Karin pointed out, the difference in quality is evident. That being said, I am amazed at how quickly this 'new' item is being brought to the market..scary!

Ajay

 

Very tacky.

 

There has been some feed back regarding this unit and it
being produced by first by Lajos Thek. so which came first the chicken or the egg. This is not the first time this unit has been round commercially. Rokuhan has not committed to producing either at this point but they did produce an RP version of the unit.


The design has been around in for a number of years. am reminded that I first saw it in the 2MM association publications from the UK. 2mm group models fine scale N on 9mm track and fine scale N narrow gauge on 6.5mm track. It was in their magazine and in their handbook at least 10 years ago if not longer, it may go back into the late 1970's when I was a member of this group.
Here is one version of it for 9mm rail.

http://freespace.virgin.net/johni.ferdelance/pennine2mm/gallery/sm2007_0414_1523\
39.jpg
the first commercial version was from Craft of Japan in 2006 or 2008 I think it was.

http://www.craft-s.com/locomotive/narrow_gauge/hon2.html


another version here

http://freespace.virgin.net/johni.ferdelance/pennine2mm/gallery/skmb.jpg

Here is Rokuhan version and as I said earlier they are soliciting
remarks suggestions etc . There is a comment form on their web page
and it can be found here. If you have something to say use it.


http://www.rokuhan.com/english/news/2011/09/z-gauge-power-unit.html

http://www.rokuhan.com/english/contact/index.html


http://freespace.virgin.net/johni.ferdelance/pennine2mm/gallery/prev19.jpg

and we are likely to see another version from Searails as they used
one under their Brill railbus in Nn3 so it will work on Z-scale track.

The Rokuhan unit has just 2 gears motor and worm shaft. the Thek
design has 3 gears so has a lower gear ration and should have more
bottom end torque than the direct drive version. I do not know what
gearing is in theSearails product. So looking at the samples you can
see there are options to increase the wheel base in the design. The
Rokuhan product has a hole at the top which will allow it to
articulate inside a body and has holes in the side frame to allow it
to be gimble mounted. No one so far has provided a boggie to be used
with this chassis or with any of them for that matter, and it is a nice unit for building critters on top of.

So yes it is new to this part of the Z scale community, but it is not an original design, it is a copy of someone else's work from years earlier.

So who are you going to burn now at the stake.

cheers Garth

 

"Full story here: http://www.rokuhan.com/english/news/2011/09/z-gauge-power-unit.html
Even the craftsmanship is different it's a clear copy of of Lajos idea and design, I just say intellectual property; sad to see something like this in our small Z world....
The only positive thing for Lajos I can see: if somebody is copying your design it must be good!"

O.K., Garth, you were a bit quicker in posting then me. In reading your thread I take my intellectual property back, yes, it's an earlier design, but still clearly grown on Lajos design and in direct competition and targeting Lajos ...."1) We would like to use plastic mold and mass production to make the price cheaper".......

just weeks apart, RP makes everything possible. Don't like this style...

 

This may be good news for us Canadians. Zthek is not and won't be available to any Canadian retailers for maybe a year from now. If these units run good I would be interested. Also they may be very cheap, another bonus.

 

Then there's this mechanism, which was introduced in Germany some time before Lajos' chassis emerged:





While it's not as similar as some of the other examples, there are just so many ways a motor, some gears and four wheels can be arranged.

 

For me, to be honest, the wheel base is too much short and therefore both, the original and the copy have no use for me. So, if I had 20mm, this could fit some of my projects. Interesting that Rokuhan copy the device without even reflecting about this, what prove that it is a pure copy of Lajos chassis.

 

My copy/paste:

I wouldn't say they stole the design in any way. A few years ago I built this:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ErieChris333/HOn30#5239418998190706130
And I got the idea from here:
http://www.nigellawton009.com/MPD18.html

 

Chris I had forgotten about Nigel Lawton's version and that is a nice one you built how does it run. I have the parts for a rubber band drive version from Nigel but never did anything with it.

regards Garth

 

Garth,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LDjoc6wmdM

Meant fo HOn30, it is running on an N scale layout.

 

I read in another yahoo group that when he was confronted Tony from Roku said he knew of Lajos' chassis...Tony didn't just "know" about Lajos' unit. He bought one from us at NTS and ran it on his track for display. If they already had one under production why would they pay $125.00 for one of Lajos' who would be in direct competition otherwise. I do believe in fair competition, what really bothers me is *my opinion* it took them such a short time to replicate all the work that Lajos spent hundreds of hours doing in research and developement.

Most of the examples of similar mechs that some posted here are in larger scales. Apples/oranges. And yes, there was a similar Japanese version by Craft Japan. Then why didn't they use THAT chassis to copy? Simple, Lajos' version is superior to any previous versions.

As I mentioned earlier, you can sure tell a huge difference in the quality of the materials. If they can sell it for that much less (they claim 1/3rd to 1/4th the price, really!), using cheap plastic, then I would have to believe the end product would be similar to today's inkjet printers; disposable units, when they break down its cheaper to buy another one rather than fix. Good thing they will be cheaper, hope they aren't a pain to swap out when they malfunction.

 

I think that in Japan, they have a problem to distinct toy and modelism.
The rails may be ok, and are good as long as you search special dimensions.
Now, if you bend the Rokuhan flex-rails over limits, you have the horror,
as they show with undelicate sensibility on the video.
On the engine side, please name me a Japan Z scale engine that is not a toy,
the moment beeing. And with toys I stopped about 14.

 

I have met and talked with Tony about a 6 months BEFORE he brought in his first piece of track for resale. He seemed to have a pretty good manufacturing operation already set up and a lot of future plans. I am sure he reads everything that we all do and comes up with ideas that are similar to someone else's. Having an item in the wings ready to produce that looks almost exactly like a competitors happens all the time. I worked for a large manufacturing corporation for 20 years and we purchased information of reversed engineered products regularly. In fact there are whole businesses that sell the reversed engineered information on a subscription basis. We always had cabinets and rooms full of dissected competitors product. If you don't know what your competitor is doing you are aiming a very big gun at your foot for shooting, As for Tony purchasing a $125 competitor's product when he already had a similar product in the wings is in my opinion normal and routine and to be expected if you plan to head out in the cold, hard world of manufacturing. He may have seen something that will be useful in a future product. When it comes to research & development, logic does NOT prevail if you expect to come up with something new. I don't think the sales of this type engine is going to balance the US Budget, so it is not likely Tony wants to put anyone out of business. It comes down to the same old situation -- if he builds a better mousetrap, he will sell lots of them. If he produces a dud, he is out his development costs plus $125.

...don

 

The gearing and weight alone will make a big difference. Lajo's engine will pull more - probably a lot more. The "new" engine will pull (or push) only about half the cars. I also see there is no front coupler. This would have to be attached to the shell.

 

And something important about that is that Lajos' engine will appeal to those who want a high-quality, precision-made product, while the Rokuhan version will appeal to those who are happy enough with something that basically gets the job done (not that the Rokuhan version will not be high-quality, just that in order to cut costs, they will unavoidably need to cut some corners, such as with the weight and gearing). I really like Lajos' unit, but I'll never be able to justify purchasing that. Now if Rokuhan comes out with a $30-or-so unit, I might be able to afford that and build a nice little Nn3 narrow gauge switcher for a mine or something. Notice in my example that Rokuhan hasn't taken away a Lajos customer (since his price is outside of my budget), but has created another market for people that otherwise might not purchase anything at all.

 

Very good point.

 

Chris I really like your design with the wheel compensation and the power pickup. Great craftsmanship.

TERL

 

Thanks, but the point was that it wasn't my design. I drew it all up in CAD, but the idea came from Nigel's site. Another one of his chassis uses the same type of compensation. And I'm sure Nigel got the idea from some one else too.