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Will our engineering resources become dominated by Chinese design?
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amyk:
"Will"? If you look at what things are like now, it's closer to "Has already".
Simon:

--- Quote from: coppercone2 on November 18, 2023, 01:19:48 am ---
--- Quote from: Simon on November 17, 2023, 08:42:43 pm ---

Electronics is not sexy anymore, there are countless degrees in other cooler subjects that have people thinking they can do electronics.

--- End quote ---

what you are looking to say is that there is alot of people out there they finally figured out through youtube how to make a microcontroller  system with a spec that is 'able to run in board room for ~30 minutes'.

--- End quote ---

Not at all, ^^that^^ is NOT electronics, ^^that^^ is programming. Ask any of these people do design a system that involves power electronics and signals and then get ready to laugh at the results when they fail because they do not understand electronics and the basis of the underlying physics. Or in my case despair every time someone says "yes but it works" of a machine that was designed by a contractor before you joined the company and have spent 2 years trying to modify whilst banging your head on the incapability of the programmer that designed it to understand common mode noise and power electronics not to mention the shit show of having two power devices being signaled by the same microcontroller system with no signal isolation. This is what separates the electronics engineers from the programmer wannabe electronics engineers.
VK3DRB:
Chinese datasheets for chips usually are missing important information and include useless information like their manufacturing line inspection criteria. They waste time, because we have to contact them every bloody time. The USA is WAY head of the game in that department. Mind you, this is a generalisation as there are big exceptions on both sides. Eg: Honeywell in the USA is worse than most Chinese companies with their documentation quality control.

The other issue is most Chinese companies do not think it is important to hire a technical writer who is competent in English to translate their comical instruction manuals. A friend tried to start a business translating for them, but no-one was interested. They do not understand that their product is more attractive if they don't write in Chinglish.

As for the products themselves, it is a mixed bag. Some of their electronics products are excellent. Other products, downright dangerous and non-compliant in any western jurisdiction. And many of their products use blatantly stolen IP.

I have had the good fortune of procuring high quality electric devices out of China, but I always have to deal with their sales department to get all the information I need.

China is still by and large a backwards country. Things will improve when the adopt adopt more of western thinking to engineering. Give them 20 to 30 years.
Simon:
The basic issue with china which my apprentice constantly fails to understand is that they do not work to a quality standard, they work to a price standard. This is a bigger barrier than most realize until they try doing business and the sharp ones end up using an agent that understands both mentalities and gets you what you want.

When I lived in Italy I worked for one of my teachers who wanted to import stuff. We would get samples of clothing in and the $0.50 Tshirt would have fabric with so few threads that you could poke your finger through it, but this met the $0.50 "spec".
coppice:

--- Quote from: Simon on November 18, 2023, 10:02:08 am ---The basic issue with china which my apprentice constantly fails to understand is that they do not work to a quality standard, they work to a price standard. This is a bigger barrier than most realize until they try doing business and the sharp ones end up using an agent that understands both mentalities and gets you what you want.

When I lived in Italy I worked for one of my teachers who wanted to import stuff. We would get samples of clothing in and the $0.50 Tshirt would have fabric with so few threads that you could poke your finger through it, but this met the $0.50 "spec".

--- End quote ---
The attitudes of most Chinese engineers have been set by Walmart being such a huge customer for the country. If you are working on something where the customer has said you need to comply with some spec for $19, your team will be very innovative in finding ways to reach that price goal while meeting the letter, if not always the spirit, of that spec. When you have a requirement for high performance, and price is less of a critical parameter, the team will still keep bringing you ideas for stripping out cost, rather than improving performance. It can be quite frustrating.
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