This topic won't be much of an interest to our American cousins, but to the members who are resident in the EU, it will be something that will be rearing it's ugly face sometime in the near future.
While I was having a discussion yesterday, with Gareth from Chester UK, I brought up the subject, as you do, of the terrible manuals that they supply with some of their machines. He agreed with me, then came out with a most remarkable statement.
Basically he said that we will have no need to worry about that in the near future, as machines will not be supplied with any manuals at all, just a couple of pages flyer, stating what the machine will do, and a pretty picture of the machine itself.
As far as I could understand, EU legislation is forbidding the supply of manuals with home machinery, you will only get the the sort of thing that comes with a kettle or deep fat fryer.
I can't elaborate on it any further, as he didn't have all the full facts himself. But I did read into it that it might be because of safety issues, untrained people taking machines apart and fiddling with them.
So it looks like there will be people like myself (jumping on the bandwagon) going around fixing people's lathes, because people will not be recommended to do it themselves (I can just see that happening). Just like how the garage system have got us by the short and curlies with modern day vehicles.
He also stated that this will be with us sooner rather than later, and he inferred sometime in the new year.
So read into it what you will, but don't go blaming or ranting at me, I am just passing on information that I picked up from the horses' mouth.
Bogs
