Speaker Meeting – “The Chain Man”

Our speaker this Wednesday is Andy Forsdick – aka “The Chain Man” – With over 36 years in the Chain industry, Andy has forgotten more about chains than most of us will ever know – He’s not coming down to sell us chains but to give freely of his experience. Andy reckons “Quality Counts” and he writes:

‘For years, the manufacture of chains has been shrouded in myth and legend. Globalisation of the chain industry and the introduction of the D.I.N. European quality standard have led to a fragmented, confusing chain market where the consumers are, more often than not, making the wrong purchasing choice – I’ll explain!

First, the history lesson – The D.I.N. Standard was introduced for chains to set a minimum standard for the worldwide manufacture of chains – at the time there were a lot of poorly manufactured chains on the world market. Sure enough, the quality of manufacture from those companies who were previously churning our poor quality improved to meet the standard, the problem then was that, to compete on a price point,some of the higher quality manufacturers who were exceeding the DIN standards, dropped their quality to compete. The result if we have a a mass market of DIN standard chains which are of a much lower quality that the highest quality manufacturers of chains and luckily we also have those manufacturers who refused to reduce the quality of their product down to the DIN standard.

I hope I can be of assistance and, along the way, explode some of the myth and legend surrounding the manufacture of what is one of the most important parts of your machine!’