Blew $900 on a cheap endoscope for spindle inspections, total waste

3 comments

3 Comments

$900 for a cheap endoscope? Man, you could have bought a decent borescope for half that and still had cash left over for a case of beer. I got one off Amazon for like 60 bucks and it works fine for poking around my lathe. Sounds like you paid for the "fancy" brand name but got the same Walmart quality. At least now you know what a $900 paperweight looks like.

the_jamie1mo ago

See, I kinda get where Wyatt52 is coming from though... $900 is a lot of money to drop on something that breaks in a week. But sometimes you do get what you pay for, and the cheap ones have that foggy lens and crap resolution that makes it hard to tell if you're looking at a crack or just a smudge. Maybe the guy just wanted something reliable straight out of the box instead of rolling the dice on a $60 gamble.

king.stella8d ago

Completely agree, that's basically what happened to me last year. I snagged a $50 snake cam off some random site and the first time I used it, the light died after like 20 minutes. Then I borrowed a buddy's fancy brand one and the picture was night and day, no fog, no weird glare, just crisp. So I get why someone would just say screw it and go for the expensive one instead of wasting time and money on three different cheap ones that each have their own problem. Plus not everyone wants to turn their side gig into a full time research project just to avoid overpaying.