Castle looking ESC coming to hobbyking
 

Hey Castle... Wondering if you know anything about this.. I was browsing through the Hobbyking warehouse's photos of upcoming products when I stumbled across this...

http://c0013554.cdn1.cloudfiles.rack...com/x2_380adea

can be found here:

http://plixi.com/p/58764778



Dont shoot the messenger just putting it out there:whistle:

Ben

it also says under the picture: "New ESC, with powerbar, powerpack heat dissipating FET's, SBEC and two PCB plus cool (castle-like) heatsink. "

If they are starting to copy companies like castle i think i'm going to start going elsewhere for batteries

Whoa, If I was Patrick I'd be seriously PO'ed !

UNLEASH THE LAYWERS PATRICK!!! it really does look identical.
My grandfather worked for cinci. Electronics up until the nineties and one of his jobs was to dissassemble rival electronics to see if patents had been infringed,and after looking at this and castles esc he said it looked lawsuit worthy...--Josh

:surprised:not a good thing to see,,i only hope that nobody here will buy those cra........ copied esc:whistle:

Unbelievably shameless copier. They didn't even change a color.

Screw hobbyking I had some electronics (batteries) from them broken out of the box. Never again!!!

Those do like CC. Hmm..

BMW318TI - did u ever consider using warranty?
HK changed my 2 lipos with no problem.

Good luck with the lawsuit... No experience in working with sales in China I assume..
It 's a shame and as long as the customers keep buying cheaper copies they will continue to sell them... I hope CC managed to establish strong bonds to HPI, traxxas etc!

at least those knock-offs will not have the awesome customer service and programmability of castle's escs.

i like to get a lot of electronics from hobbyking, but ever since i got my first castle esc, i have been hooked. i now have 4 (5 soon) castle escs and 5 (6 soon) castle motors.


my point is, even though hobbyking can make a castle esc look-a-like, they will never be as programmable or reliable as the real thing.

I'm not condoning it, but cmon guys where do you think hpi and traxxas stuff is made? The slash 4x4 comes out of the box with aade in tiawan sticker on the chassis. Fact is castle is one of the only companies I know of that still actually makes almost all of their stuff in house here in the states. We all know that the only similarities will be the looks. Good luck with reliability and cs but you get what you pay for. Buy ten cheap copies or the real deal don steel cc stuff once. I'm not surprised at all. Hpi has been using cloned castle stuff for a while and no body even flinched. Don't know if it's made by castle but if it was why rebadge it or put it in a different motor can? We are all happy to buy the turnigy pack which are more than likely the same cells in our American packs but we are mad they came out with some crappy esc clone? All or nothin. It is what it is. Won't stop me from buyin stuff there bit for damn sure I will be gettin all the momo's and speedos from the cc crew. Yes it does suck but I reall don't see it cutting into cc profit margins. More like a running joke at the factory, " look our stuff is so awesome even the chinese are trying to call it there own!"

Err hpi and traxxas "cc copies" are made by castle.

They are just branded by castle per their customers request.

Nothing wrong with that.

Even if the ESC is copied component by component, Without castle support and firmware it´s just a Green chinese ESC...

Wasn't sure. Doesn't make sense to me but then again I'm not a retailer. All I'm sayin is ya can't sell to the companies that make their stuff overseas and not expect them to rip you off in some way. Not saying it's hpi or traxxas but it does have a "power upgrade combo" listed in the
manual for the fourby slash and all you have to do is send in your working vxl combo and $250 and you get a monster combo back. What a deal huh? Can't trust in anyone but cc IMHO. Just my take on it but I'm a little too literal for most peoples liking anyway. People in the know won't get duped by this crap even if it "looks" like castle stuff and as far as stopping the blatent reverse engineering, good luck. That's just how the world works now a days. With dollar signs in everyone eyes it's easier to steal someone elses hard work and sell it for your own to make a quick buck. For shame.

Yeah, this looks lawsuit worthy. I'm having our lawyer check it out.

Hobby King has done this with products from Traxxas, Spektrum, and Futaba just to name a few. No surprise they will continue to expand their knock off inventory has long as people keep buying their junk.

You are correct. Until more people figure out that "nothing" is the correct way to go, it won't change. For me, it's NOTHING. That company / site adds NOTHING to the hobby. To say that they're a PARASITE gives them too much credit. The only positive note I can see is that perhaps this will make some more hobbyists "see the light."

Don't forget Deans!

Could not agree more!!!

atleast they give an decent quality at an decent price, just to bad they obvious is trying to imitade others design.

There is a difference between imitation and counterfeiting. When you make something look indistinguishable from another manufacturer, hoping that people believe it is the same product, that's counterfeiting. That's what this looks like to me.

Yes, and it is not only unethical, it is illegal in most cases.

First of all(!), I use LOTS of Castle Creations products and spend LOTS on them. Products I bought so far: 2 Mamba-25, MMP, MMM, about 5 CM20 motors, a 2200kv motor, ICE HV 160A and about 10 motors from their sale. I'm happy with (most of) these.
But WHY, WHY does (almost) everyone defend CC? And why does HK gets bashed like this? About 90% of those CC defenders buy cheapass Zippy (Turnigy/Flightmax/whatever they're called) LiPo's. Why don't they buy the real Flightpower, Hacker, Kokam cells? These company's suffer because of HK... I just don't understand it. Castle Creations is being over-praised imho.

Again: I bought lots of Castle products and I really like them but almost everyone acts like Castle is a god or something ...


I think I'll be bashed too now, oh well... :)

I am sorry but to me that is laughable. Clone or knock off products are never of good quality. There is no logical way they can offer a product of even close to the same quality when they are charging a fraction of what the original quality product costs.

That MAY be true in some cases but myself I wont touch anything from HobbyKing. I refuse to support a company that I know is in my perception steeling from others.

I defend cc cause they make great products and take care of their people. Not to mention the support on this forum alone. Plus it's not like you can buy a Chinese version of their stuff that will hold a candle the the cc stuff. Yup I run turnigy packs too cause I think it's bs to pay 300% markup for a friggin plastic box and an American brand sticker on the same cells. Not only that but racing three to four classes takes at least eight packs or so. If I bought "American" brand batteries that would cost around a grand for me. It's not like their packs work any better either I've ran em all. So take it however you want to but yes Patrick is the friggin man in my book. He has gone above and beyond to keep me racing here in socal and I don't forget it. They have thier own original designs and products that is why so many people crap on hk cause the only thing they don't pirate is the lipos. Pretty hard to copy a lipo, I figure they just get em direct from the manufacture and cut all the middle man American ma style crap out. So yes I will continue to be thrifty and run their lipos but as I've said a bunch before motors and escs are comin from the only place in my mind there is to get them. Fanboy? Whatever their stuff works like a champ for me and the cd rocks. Can we say that about Slovak or twekin? I run hard trust me, it's a well known fact. I mean come on they call max power at the tracks. Patrick knows as well. If anyone can cook it it's me. If it can take my racing abuse it's golden. Stop worrying about who gets what where it's our choice but like I said people in the know run the cc label. Nuff said

well how simulare is this compare to the cc(other than green heatsink)?

I would say, dont worry about it. it isent a competitor, just an copy ment for the chinese marked as they do with all well known brand names.
Dont think it will steal any of the marked

The only way stop the copying is higer income as they cant make them cheaper and also make it possible for them to purchase "the real deal"
And yes i know low income isent a excuse to make abvious copys, but one of the reasons as why its become like this.

I also belive hobbycity has an american owner

My statmend was not about the clones

i have alot of wires, connectors, chargers and batterys from them and all is of pretty decent quality at an decent price.
especially like the 10c charge rate and the ultra nice 1000 watt icharger.

im no fan off rebranding chinese lipo and sell them at 3x the price, then you could get an korean made lipo at the same price

I agree, their service is very good. I can't agree with you to "people in the know run the cc label". I prefer my Pletti or Hackers above any CC motor I have. So why do I also use CC products? Because I can't afford a 600 dollar MGM or Schulze ESC. If I could, I would definitely buy a MGM or Schulze ESC.

If those HK ESC's will be half of the cost as a CC ESC I will definitely buy one.

Well batteries are disposable. You use them and then get rid of them when they come to the end of their life. Sure electronics like an ESC can also wear out, etc. but you'll go through a lot more batteries than ESCs.

Frankly CC makes a quality product at a competitive price. Hacker, Flightpower, etc. make a quality product, but not at a real competitive price. No way they could sell for what HK, etc. do, of course. However, the difference in price is quite extreme. For bashing, Flightpower, etc. dont make a lot of sense but for racing, sure its another story.

Another reason too, is that often Flightpower, etc. don't necesarily make batteries in the cell/ratings that bashers are interested in.

Personal preference I guess. I ran a hacker motor for a while and it was good but didn't have the power the neu/cc motors give me. Never wanted to or would buy a MGM or schultz esc. Not a fan of overpriced stuff built half a world away.

With batteries that last hundreds of cycles do you really think that is the case? I have lost more MMM & RX8 ESCs over time then I have Thunder Power batteries (just about the only thing I run).

Never lost in ESCs myself, but I've only been bashing.

Hacker seems a bit overpriced and not competetive like castle.

thats not my experience

I am using Hyperion batteries great stuff for great prices!
I only hate China shit, so Taiwan, Japan, Korean etc are good stuff like real USA stuff. Also support/warranty/software etc are much better then HK shit.

Supporting clones in any way is condoning theft. Time, money, sweat, etc. are spent in engineering, trial and error, equipment, parts, etc. in the development of any innovative new part - of course a clone can be sold for less...they STOLE the engineering costs. This is no different than stealing a car in the big picture of things. Buying a clone ought to be punishable by law as an accessory to stealing IMO.

The problem with blatant copying like this is , while China does have copyright laws they aren't worth the paper they are written on. They fiercely protect their own and only way you will get any justice is to pay a bunch of corrupted government officials to actually exercise the laws that are in place. Other than that I doubt much can be done.

This is bad. Really bad IMO and if these copied ESCs perform well that could be even worse. If they drive Castle out of business who will innovate and develop new ESCs. The copycats sure wont and probably wouldn't know how to anyway. What makes me wonder is why no one is copying the Euro ESCs like MGM and Schulze???? Surely them being more expensive there would be even greater profit margin. Why are they almost always picking on Castle? Anyone have theory on this?

I hope you get some sort of positive outcome out of this Patrick.

People who are buying castle will always buy castle products. IMO this product looks identical just on outside. You can not tell what is inside and if it is copied.

Dejan

Too bad to see HobbyKing going down this path. Regardless of whether you loved or hated their lipos and other gear at least they were selling their own products. Now they have this Castle clone ESC, along with the Spektrum and Futaba clone RX's and the HPI Baja clones, with no doubt more things to come.

The sad part is there is very high demand for these products. As long as there is demand and people willing to buy it, they'll keep churning out the clones.

+1. this was the way i used to feel.....

however....
After seeing all of these new products.... i'll add that I will never... EVER buy from hobby king again. no batteries, nothing. they've lost my business for good. ugh.....this makes me wanna vomit.

Yea i've decided i'm done with hobby king too now....i'll run my current packs till their done and thats it...i can get roar approved packs from amain for only a slight amount more then packs with shipping from HK anyway

Thank you Mike!