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Rocker switches - imported Chinese rubbbish! (RANT ALERT)
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brian_mk:
The Bulgin (Arcolectric) switches from Farnell/CPC are no more expensive - they can work out cheaper.
You need to order a miniumum quantity to make it economical because of the small handling and delivery charge.
Siwastaja:
Gyro has the right answer.

The lack of understanding how the switches work, i.e., PEBKAC is the root issue. The Chinese switches in question may or may not be fine. OTOH, you may be able to find high quality expensive Western switches which show exactly the same "problem" on multimeter ohms range. Your calculation of 70W dissipation when running rated load sounds alarming, but it's easy to prove in a simple experiment. Try it and see what happens.

I have a Chinese heatpump keeping my house warm and I like the fact it does work unlike many of the overengineered "Western" counterparts which require constant servicing. This seems to be the general trend. Chinese quality has gone up, from crap to high-tech, while keeping overengineering and all kinds of "we don't want to actually sell you our products" BS games down.

Obviously, if you go to the Aliexpress crap markets, buy crap knowingly, and expect it to be crap, then is this a surprise?

Many if not most of the components you buy from Farnell have China as country-of-origin.

The story of not being able to buy a fan locally at all is very descriptive. So even the crappy fan from China was working better than the non-existing fan. Go back to the Good Old Times and you weren't able to buy the fan anyway. The whole affordable GPU thing (and hence, need for the fan) is enabled by China, like it or not.

Regarding the question to what has happened to electronics industry, the answer is, the products are cheaper than ever, last longer, require less maintenance, consume less energy, offer more bang for buck than ever.

You may have fond memories of childhood, but they do not represent the reality. And if you find a "built like a tank" electronic product from 1960 or 1970's which still works, it's only because of selection bias, the one that survived is not a representative sample. In reality, electronics in the past required constant servicing. They were so expensive to buy that you had to repair them. There were actual repair shops everywhere and repairmen made home calls to fix TVs and radios. Nowadays the expectation is a product lasts at least 3-4 years without repair, usually for much longer, and then you can just easily afford a new one.

But yeah, avoid Aliexpress components. They are not even cheaper. Buy from proper distributors and try to combine a few projects on single order to hit the minimum free shipping.
brian_mk:
Well, maybe I am biased because I used to work for GEC Marconi.
I admit I am an old fart and at the risk of sounding like Victor Meldrew, products were tested to destruction and designed and built to last.
brian_mk:
The overwhelming response seems to be that China will rule the world.
I'm just glad that I am 66 years old and won't live to see the day.
Siwastaja:
That's a complete strawman, no one said that. But you seem to like oversimplifications.

When it comes to producing affordable consumer electronics, China already pretty much rules the world, this is just an observation of reality. This has been obvious for at least two decades now, so you have seen it already in your late 40's.

That doesn't need to be a bad thing, and we have a lot of brain resources here in the "West" still able to come up with important electronic things.
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