That's the funny thing about engineering

… That's the funny thing about engineering. I have built a lot of things and have used a lot of tools across the entire spectrum from shitty garbage cast out of pot metal (think Harbor Freight, Aliexpress etc) to five-figure Serious Tools for Serious People (cranes, large format cutters, thrusters, advanced measuring equipment etc.) From that experience I can say confidently: It is impossible to know for sure if something is reliable until you actually use it for an extended period of time. I have seen countless absolute hack-job products made of pot metal last decades in a marine environment and I have seen a similarly endless number of beautifully engineered products made of top-tier materials fail catastrophically. Sometimes the shitty product will have two failures that miraculously cancel each other out, or it will rust to shit and keep working, or it will fall to pieces but can be easily epoxied back together to get another ten years out of it. That's the other side of the coin of perfection - repair. With the beautifully-engineered product made with quality materials? …