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Ok, my 2 pence... (Mind you, considering we have no idea what this machine is, it might be worthless)
If you want to carry on supplying people in the EU with American products you better start making sure you provide the means of installation or maintenence. Trust me, US equipment on a site is a pain the a$$ if its industrial in nature.
You can't argue this point with the distributer and doing so will do you no good, because mark my words you'll be on the list to be dropped if you don't make any allowances.
So, how much is a pack of nuts and bolts going to cost you? It doesn't have to be every nut and bolt but most certainly any to do with installation/maintenence parts (ie. Covers on the unit, replaceable items) should come with Metric nuts/bolts.
Your French customer is right... Whoever they will be installing this machine for won't be happy... My dads business won't even touch anything which isn't metric because the customers don't want it. Standardising is very important in engineering / manufacturing areas because down time = money!
Why won't you go to your supplier about this? One US toolkit in many cases just isn't going to hack it because it will be lost at some point... and one kit between however many maintenence engineers is also not practical.
You don't need to redesign the whole product to change the nuts/bolts, and I can't help thinking this wouldn't be the first time they have sold to the EU market, so if you asked, they might be able to supply.
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