While the milker works well, as expected there are quite a few small things that add up to bwing fairly irritating as another 10.00 invested at manufacturing would make this unit 5 stars all around.
Quality control on welds (and proper firment prior to welding) is very poor with the brakets for Steam Separator and other items off by as much as 15 degrees from intended position. Doesnt affect functionality but certainly could be improved.
The use of Steel (not stainless) hardware on this item to me is unacceptable and a cheap shortcut that makes no sense. Additionally the nuts should be nylock as just a few days of rolling around our milk parlor saw the pan that holds milk jug to cart fall out completely despite proper torque, you will wan tto swap these or at least use some locktite however ditching the soon to rust Steel is a great choice.
The biggest issue we have had is that the design of the cart is a joke. Id say maybe it works well on perfect flat floors and didnt get field testing but even on the kitchen floor it leaves much to be desired. The footprint is not wide enough for the high center of gravity and paired with the tripod wheel this thing wants to tip at every movement, especially at the worst time- full of milk. The cart needs a wider stance and a second caster just to increase stability, luckily a 2nd caster is easy to add with just a piece of flat bar bolted in place of the original. To make it actually usable around uneven floors and such however, I will be putting 4 -10" swivel casters and a new wider stance so it can be moved in any direction as needed.
Overall this is a very affordable milker and allows folks that may not be able to purchase a more expensive unit to move into machine milking without huge investment. With a little time and effort I believe most the issues can be solved however I would gladly pay 100.00 more for a solid unit instead of dunping time and money into correcting poor engineering. The changes could be made at time of manufacturing for very little money compared to what it costs customers to correct the issues.
Give it a 4 stars, I really place somewhere along the lines of a 3.5 but thats not an option and it is certainly better than a 3.