The China stereotype is well-earned in some aspects. However good and bad manufacturers can be found in every corner of the globe. In a lot of instances... The "buyers" and corporations looking to Chinese manufacturers Will go above and beyond pushing the manufacturers to cut corners wherever possible just to save one tenth of a penny. So that the products can be brought back here to America and sold in every Walmart and dollar store. As someone with a machinists and systems engineer background, I've had my own humble small electronics lab/business for the past 10 years or so. Doing mostly industrial board repair and troubleshooting. I specialize in test equipment troubleshooting, repair, calibration, and other metrology related tasks. (Not that this makes me an expert) but Chinese manufacturing has intrigued me for at least the past 15 years. All you have to do is look at companies siglent, Rigol, and now even higher end stuff like fluke and Agilent. To see the incredible value being created. If you could go back in time 20 years with an oscilloscope from Rigol or siglent.... Folks would be blown away what you can get for the price. Not just the features but the actual engineering and quality of the product...... Engineers and other professionals here in the USA would have been absolutely blown away with what is possible for the price. Obviously there are two sides to this and I am by no means an expert. having intimately dealt with high-end metrology grade equipment.... I feel like I'm decent at discerning the quality of manufacturing I'm boards and test gear.... I've been continually impressed with a lot of what's been coming out of China in the last decade. And obviously big corporations with r&d departments and other industry professionals are going to stick with companies like HP and tektronics..... But for a huge portion of folks who are either learning electronics, or developing a business and niche of their own...... There are options and qualities available to them now that could have only been dreamed about 20 years ago. And I'm very thankful for that Sorry to ramble on.. glad I found your channel it looks like you get up to some really interesting stuff
Some of the electrical engineers at manufacturing plants are pretty incredible. Having a fully populated circuit board powered up, and components start getting yanked out, and add some solder blobs to complete connections. Component count reduction to decrease overall cost, while having the unit still functional. Reverse polarity protection be damned (amongst others)! Watch out for "ball bearings" from China. Has the mystery behind the bearing in the ball point pen been figured out yet? Interesting little bit of trade war history between Japan and China regarding disposable ball point pens.
After chatting with the manufacturer, they are able to supply the ball bearing based connectors, for only a few cents more per cable!
The China stereotype is well-earned in some aspects. However good and bad manufacturers can be found in every corner of the globe. In a lot of instances... The "buyers" and corporations looking to Chinese manufacturers Will go above and beyond pushing the manufacturers to cut corners wherever possible just to save one tenth of a penny. So that the products can be brought back here to America and sold in every Walmart and dollar store.
As someone with a machinists and systems engineer background, I've had my own humble small electronics lab/business for the past 10 years or so. Doing mostly industrial board repair and troubleshooting. I specialize in test equipment troubleshooting, repair, calibration, and other metrology related tasks. (Not that this makes me an expert) but Chinese manufacturing has intrigued me for at least the past 15 years. All you have to do is look at companies siglent, Rigol, and now even higher end stuff like fluke and Agilent. To see the incredible value being created.
If you could go back in time 20 years with an oscilloscope from Rigol or siglent.... Folks would be blown away what you can get for the price. Not just the features but the actual engineering and quality of the product...... Engineers and other professionals here in the USA would have been absolutely blown away with what is possible for the price.
Obviously there are two sides to this and I am by no means an expert.
having intimately dealt with high-end metrology grade equipment.... I feel like I'm decent at discerning the quality of manufacturing I'm boards and test gear.... I've been continually impressed with a lot of what's been coming out of China in the last decade. And obviously big corporations with r&d departments and other industry professionals are going to stick with companies like HP and tektronics..... But for a huge portion of folks who are either learning electronics, or developing a business and niche of their own......
There are options and qualities available to them now that could have only been dreamed about 20 years ago. And I'm very thankful for that
Sorry to ramble on.. glad I found your channel it looks like you get up to some really interesting stuff
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and look forward to more feedback on my projects!
Some of the electrical engineers at manufacturing plants are pretty incredible. Having a fully populated circuit board powered up, and components start getting yanked out, and add some solder blobs to complete connections. Component count reduction to decrease overall cost, while having the unit still functional. Reverse polarity protection be damned (amongst others)!
Watch out for "ball bearings" from China. Has the mystery behind the bearing in the ball point pen been figured out yet? Interesting little bit of trade war history between Japan and China regarding disposable ball point pens.
thanks for doing this research so we don't have to :D
I'm just doing this research to procrastinate on the real project I'm supposed to be working on :)