General > General Technical Chat
Electronics products...where are they made/designed?
Sighound36:
Good grief, is that chip on your shoulder weighing you down to much? having issues standing straight in sunlight? Need to release some venom?
Many years ago when I worked for those nasty capitalists who dared to be-grudgingly fund my meger existence. Purchased a factory in the far East not China.
All of a sudden components were significantly cheaper and easier to obtain (overlord company had installed QA team inside factory) for a good 10 years profits were up and costs were down. Then those hard working under paid workers felt they need better pay and conditions. Who'd have thought it?
Now back to 2021 this year we have made a bold step and purchased a small manufacturing facility nothing Dyson like :-DD around 300 square meters. We are designing, machining, assembling all our products with as much British expertise, and components as humanly possible. We feel we can achieve around 85-88% of the total BOM. Certain items like inductors, capacitors etc will come from China even if they are badged Wurth etc. Fact of life and the way the huge manufacturing cities have sprung up in China etc al
We lost a great deal of our manufacturing base here some 20 years when the great rush to go east young man was initiated and our own ability to produce goods correctly all but disappeared, so a heavy reliance is placed I can get it from Ali express etc for $2 shipped.
Yes the products will be more expensive than the usual suspects however there is a market for genuine home grown quality goods again maybe not Gtech in size but its working well
Zero999:
--- Quote from: Faringdon on July 21, 2021, 07:54:30 pm ---It also does western countries great harm to get other countries to do most of their general electronics.
Skills that are needed here drain away. A lack of skilled people when those skills are in fact needed here.
I dont think it does China any good either....getting payed a pittance by western middle men.....who become multi millionaires for doing very little...just placing orders
--- End quote ---
Why do you keep changing your screen name?
China has benefitted from manufacturing, as has the west. Would you like it, if electronic products cost more than double the price? My parents tell me that back when TV first became popular, back in the 50s, a television set would cost two months wages.
Faringdon:
Philips and Tridonic are highly successful European lighting co's, that get (or would get if needed) government money to survive (the government has their backs) .....the upshot is that the engineers that work at these co's often leave and use the electronics skills to help other start up co's which helps the economy in europe. And better still....most times, these co's turn in a handsome profit.
UK does very little of this nurturing, and hence UK has reported a negative balance of trades each year for the last 35 years. UK has over 2 trillion of debt. UK's debt to GDP is now round 100%......showing that importing all your electronics does not make any country more wealthy...it makes the western middle men more wealthy.
China and the far east will soon stop selling cheaply to the west, they will increase prices...and why shouldnt they. The Chinese are good hard working peoples. The salt of the earth. The Chinese will soon own all of the South China Sea, and will be the only country in the world to have suceeded without invasions etc. So China will soon tire of selling cheaply to the west....other far eastern countrys will follow suit. The south china sea contains vast oil and mineral wealth...China will be way above and will be the worlds most powerful nation...they wont want to sell cheaply to the west...........China recently went to Mars.
Already western co's cannot even design anything...because when something electronics has been designed.....it needs electronics engineers to maintain the design....obselesence /nil stock etc...the decimation of the uk electronics industry means that there just arent enough of such electronics engineers around......in uk, you find its difficult to find an EE engineer who can find a replacement for a nil stocked El cap....so with the decimation of uk electronics, comes the reduction in numbers of EE's needed to maintain designs, and thence its not possible to do electronics design in uk...or less so, due to the decimation of uk electronics......in uk, try and find an electronics engineer in any region that can pick a BOM for an electronics product...youll struggle......or one that can change the footprint on a pcb of some device..youll struggle.....all due to outsourcing of electronics to the far east.
ebastler:
@Faringdon -- relax... If electronics products from China indeed become more expensive in the future, more electronics design/manufacturing/jobs will come back to Europe and the UK. I think you can trust market forces to balance this out.
Frankly, in my book it would be a good thing if consumer electronics get more expensive. Encouraging more thoughtful purchases, longer use, and better repairability would all benefit the environment.
On a separate note: If you want a fresh start on this forum, with yet another new account -- why start with the exact same discussions which have dragged down your credibility before? Or is it that you don't care about the reputation of your forum personality, and just want to make sure it cannot be linked to your real-world name? In that case, just avoid those wixsite links and you should be alright...
Zero999:
The jobs have gone, never to return. If China put their prices up, production will most likely move to another low wage country. Even if manufacturing does return to the west, it will be heavilly automated and create few jobs.
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