I for one am very disturbed by this lack of quality control. I was actually thinking this was a joke until the OP actually did post pictures. Sad, very sad indeed. There is obviously a procedure lacking both overseas and most disheartening, within the US when the product is received, then shipped to a consumer. For a piece of life support equipment like this, I believe this is an inexcusable situation. Am I being harsh? No, not at all. I own several of these regulators and this is not the first time there was a problem with QC, the very first problem was that rebuild kits were incomplete on a not so small scale. At one point, it took me 3 kits to get all of the parts to rebuild one 1st stage.
The other issue is who sold the product without inspecting and testing it? Most shops that I am familiar with always go over each and every piece of equipment, inspect it and make adjustments if necessary to ensure quality for their customer. In today's rush to make a quick buck, we have this as the end result. In my opinion, there was a failure at a minimum of 3 levels. I'll give you the fact that any fabrication process can go wrong, such as a drill bit sliding back into the chuck but 1) This should have never left the factory PERIOD. 2) When received in the US from the manufacturer, it should have been visually inspected and 3) Those that sold it should have never shipped it without a visual inspection and checking the operation/checking IP (not that IP was a factor for the HP ports).
Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for the manufacturer. Lack of quality control for a piece of equipment this important is completely and totally inexcusable.
