This is just a cheap coated pole you can find at a hardware store. It wasn't as straight as I had hoped and the fact that I was using it with cheap bearings didn't help. The price seems a bit high for what it is, but I haven't compared it to a hardware store. I should have just bought mild steel bar from my industrial metal supplier but it saved me a trip. The last time I needed something like this I bought a precision ground rod. Well, it's not nearly so, and it's almost the other way around. What I was hoping for was somewhere between a cheap rod and a precision ground rod. Maybe there is no such thing. It looks like it will get the job done, as it does with a shaft that only rotates 90 degrees, but I wouldn't recommend it for a rotating shaft, especially at higher RPMs. It doesn't look like it's bent, it just wasn't manufactured to a tight straightness tolerance.