I was able to fix it myself very easily with some sandpaper and good plastic safe marine grease (there is a good YouTube video on how to do this), but on some level it's understandable for people to expect expensive kit like this to be free of those obvious manufacturing defects

First, this is a toy, and an expensive toy, but that written it seems reasonably well made and certainly has a feel, and sense of quality that is well beyond any cheaper plastic joystick.

The main toggle switches are real metal and not a cheap feeling plastic like most of the other buttons and hat switches on it

BUT the parts that REALLY matter, like the arms of the throttle or the internals of the joystick gimbal, are cheap plastic like everything else

I didn't want to spend $200 on a Saitek only to possibly get annoyed at having a cheap plastic feel.

Not cheap plastic

My Saitek controlers may have been cheap plastic and would accordingly eventually break down, but at least they worked years before doing so...not ONE week.

Throttle quadrant is cheaper quality (plastic throttles, metal base), but still good.

the rhino throttle honestly feels like cheap plastic

especially elite dangerous has its own setup with the hot as and no need to extra configuration.

I'd recommend the Saitek X-55 as it does have the Z direction twist feature

, I well tell I got for two reasons

It can be pretty simple when using the GUI version, or very complex when using the script version which offer C like operands and even stuff like bit shifting.