13 ms·

>I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China As a software engineer who w

• antigeox 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Aurornis 2y ago
  > The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? It’s not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing). They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One factory can get their materials and machines from other factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange rates. People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the United States. They don’t have the volume of JLCPCB but they’ve been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/ https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
  • stingrae 2y ago
    In China, they compete with each other to get be the cheapest. Here (Bay Area) it feels like the PCB fab and assembly houses have decided to be higher priced because the defense contracts (and FAANG Quick turns) are willing to pay it.
    • pclmulqdq 2y ago
      The assembly houses have done this, but the American PCB fabrication companies often have a "slow and cheap" service. They definitely optimize for the defense market, though.
    • adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      I think your cause and effect is backwards. They target defense and FAANG R&D because there's no way you can compete on price when you have to pay your employees $20-30 an hour and you have to do small batches because you can't compete on price.
      • stingrae 2y ago
        In China they are pushing automation. When you are charging $500+ a pcbs, you don't care as much.
  • pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Most US-based PCB manufacturers can do low-volume PCBs rather cheaply for you, but not quite at China prices. AdvancedPCB in the US has their "$33 each" which gets you a very quick turnaround on a pretty-good-tech 2-layer board for $100 total (minimum 3 boards). They do 4-layer PCBs for $66/board and they apparently also do RF materials for $100/board. Sierra Circuits, for example, also has similar prices. This is a market that exists. This is not the price you get from China, but this is still a pretty damn good deal. When I was in college, $33 each was great (this was before JLC and PCBWay), and I would say the same for most hobby projects.
    • Aurornis 2y ago
      OSH Park has been doing 4 layer boards for at $10 per square inch for a set of 3 for years. Shipping included. 2 layer for $5/sq in. Much cheaper for anything but the largest boards. It was actually only recently that China low volume manufacturing beat out OSH Park for very small boards once you factored in shipping.
      • pclmulqdq 2y ago
        At one point recently, I used OSH Park to make a PCB that was exactly 1 square inch, and I felt like I was stealing money from someone with how cheap it was. For the record, college was more than 3 years ago for me, and $33/board (last I checked) does not beat any of the other prototyping services except at very large sizes - they go up to 60 sq in for that price.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • Animats 2y ago
      That's not bad. Sierra and Protologix are much more expensive.
    • jdietrich 2y ago
      "Not quite at China prices" is something of an understatement. JLCPCB offer five 100mm*100mm 4-layer boards for $7. Not $7 each, $7 total for five boards. Shipping to Europe is $1.50.
  • eru 2y ago
    Chinese labour isn't that cheap anymore. Chinese wages are higher than those in Mexico for example.
    • grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
      My impression, having visited the place, is that the Chinese laborers just work ridiculously hard. Part of this is due to culture and very heavy handed management, part of this due to the working class seeing huge returns on their labor (wealth has grown exponentially in their own lifetimes).
      • eru 2y ago
        Going a bit on a tangent: I grew up in Europe, but am now living in Singapore. It's interesting: despite all the PRC's advances and progress in the last few decades, they are still the poorest Chinese-majority country. You can go even wider, and look at countries with sizeable Chinese minorities, like Malaysia or Thailand, and I think you will find that the average ethnic Chinese person there also makes more than the average ethnic Chinese person does in the PRC. I haven't checked the numbers for all of the relevant countries, but I think it's fair to say that by and large, PR China has the poorest ethnically Chinese people.
        • HPsquared 2y ago
          Similarly the UK is pretty much the poorest Anglo country. It seems to be a pattern where the most ambitious/productive types "boil off" to where there is more opportunity. I suspect this pattern is reflected with most diaspora groups.
          • neom 2y ago
            It also begets the other, a place that has that opportunity attracts people who want to work, people who want to work build opportunity, attract more people, etc. Once you're in a death spiral of people who don't want to work and you're not specifically building socialism, you end up in this half functional dead state like my country (Canada). I always say, I honestly don't care if we do communism or capitalism just pick one and do it well.
• Veliladon 2y ago
  Because there's nowhere in the US like Shenzhen, Guangdong or Hong Kong. Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the production of iPhones to India or Vietnam? You need all the ancillary industries around the production to be there, along with being competitive and commoditized as well. When a supplier has something go wrong a line of manufacturing doesn't go down. You go down the street to the same guy selling the same thing and have them pick up the slack. If you want a 1uF ceramic cap come hell or high water there's going to be a dozen people selling them all quoting a price a little above cost. When Apple moved production to India and Vietnam? When you hear Apple talking about a few billion in investment in Indonesia? This is what they're helping set up and what takes a decade to do. Anyone can buy automation equipment but there's nowhere in the US you can do what JLCPCB/PCBWay do with PCB and electronics assembling because we literally don't manufacture all the ancillary stuff required in the US, little alone manufacture it all in the same place. If the SMT components are manufactured domestically say for military purposes it's going to be spread out all over the US because politicians pork barrel contracts for their districts and states. You could setup next to a Mouser distribution hub but Mouser is a middleman and they have you over a barrel. What do middlemen do in that situation? They raise prices just enough to the point where it's uneconomical to leave. You metaphorically need to invent the universe to make it work in the US.
  • likeabatterycar 2y ago
    > Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the production of iPhones to India or Vietnam? You left out the part about dormitories full of modern-day slaves, complete with nets so they don't leap to their deaths. Generally this is frowned upon in the West. India and Vietnam wouldn't tolerate it either, despite being developing countries. Wasn't there a riot at Apple's India factory over work conditions or am I thinking of something else? Bury this post all you want; I know a guy at Apple that saw the nets in person. It's quite a sight to behold and humbling experience.
    • moshun 2y ago
      While I agree with the sentiment, the new administration clearly doesn’t care about that and has no intention of fixing it. This political theater so they can fix it later.
• jaredklewis 2y ago
  > The question is how did we let it go this far? Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn’t make sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of every industrial sector. We don’t need all nations to manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and Tylenol. Trade is good. The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. Half of century of economic policy can’t be reversed in 5 years.
  • eastbound 2y ago
    > The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new That’s what I was taught when I grew up in the 1989ies.
  • brabel 2y ago
    > The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. And as far as I can see, that idea comes from China simply having grown its economy to a size comparable to that of the USA, nothing else? But everyone during the Chinese miracle growth (from 1980's to today) expected China would've become the largest economy in the world by the 2020's. I guess people just didn't really take that seriously until it actually became true?
    • throw310822 2y ago
      Exactly. We knew perfectly well it was coming, for decades, and we knew perfectly well the US would have put up a fight to prevent it. Not a competition, a fight: real and fake accusations, FUD, tariffs, or even actual war. Now the time has come and we're in the middle of it. At least, I hope this is not just the beginning.
    • elfbargpt 2y ago
      They expected China to grow in a way that would lead to the "west" exerting much more control over China than they ended up with today. Basically they wanted more western-style capitalism, reduction of state control, etc... Now China is very strong, and the west exerts very little influence
• likeabatterycar 2y ago
  > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Because the West has to actually follow environmental and safety regulations. As opposed to write them down on paper and wipe your ass with it when the West isn't looking. Evidence: I watched a tour video from one of these Chinese PCB houses and some of the workers were wearing surgical masks. Not for COVID mind you, for presiding over open vats of boiling poison that would need a chemical respirator in any responsible country.
  • Freedom2 2y ago
    Given how much the US wants to deregulate everything, perhaps it can become the Shenzhen of the West. And not in the good way.
    • ab5tract 2y ago
      *A handful of oligarchs and their useful idiots in the US. Fixed that for you.
  • PeterStuer 2y ago
    "Because the West has to actually follow environmental and safety regulations" ... that can only exist because they can circumvent them by offshoring all their production to the East and South. If they actually wanted to comply rather than bypass said regulations they would have to curb consumption for which there would not be support.
    • likeabatterycar 2y ago
      Next you're going to tell me that the cobalt used to make batteries for the electric vehicles literally saving the environment right now in the West is being mined by enslaved children in the Congo with archaic hand tools and no PPE under inconceivable conditions.
      • LinXitoW 2y ago
        No, I'd tell you that the cobalt for electric cars is only a tiny fraction of the total cobalt used, and that combustion engines also need a lot, AND that there's less un-ethical sources of cobalt that many manufacturers use. But that's the nitpicker in me. The general point that our over-consumption drives like 80% of the bad things in the world still stands. The only real solution is to consume less.
• anigbrowl 2y ago
  [flagged]
• suraci 2y ago
  I post this elsewhere, i'll just put it here again: Due to underdeveloped economies, developing countries cannot avoid economic dependence on developed countries, especially in areas such as high technology, equipment, and precision instruments. However, this dependence varies depending on the development stage of each country. For example, African nations primarily require food to sustain basic living conditions. Regardless of their specific needs, this situation has resulted in a unique exchange mechanism: developing countries must offer their best products in exchange for goods from developed countries. As a result, people in developing countries are unable to enjoy the finest products produced in their own countries, and sometimes not even second-tier products, as these are reserved for foreign consumers. The U.S. market features products from various countries and regions, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Jamaica, and Mexico. The world's finest products flow into the U.S. market in exchange for U.S. dollars. As everyone competes to obtain dollars, competition intensifies, leading to high product quality and low prices. This has created unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. market. This outcome is a result of market mechanisms and the benefits that the U.S. has gained from the global status of the dollar, established by the Bretton Woods Conference after World War II. However, the massive influx of foreign products into the U.S. has also impacted its domestic industries, causing factory closures and rising unemployment. This issue cannot be ignored, which is why the forces of free trade and protectionism in the U.S. have been in constant conflict. — Wang Huning, America Against America as long as the US still export USD to exchange products, this situation will not change > how these Chinese firms are so cheap? believe me, we don't want this, we have no choice, just like all other 3rd countries, cheap products, cheap minerals, cheap men and women, all running to the US to be exchanged for dollars
  • bigbacaloa 2y ago
    For those that don't know, Wang hunting wrote that in 1991! Now he is one of the top dogs in the Chinese government ....
• thesaintlives 2y ago
  Because it is not $120 of raw material...
• somenameforme 2y ago
  Prices in the West are maximized with the goal of reaching the peak point on the supply vs demand curve. Prices in the East, and China in particular, are minimized [presumably?] with the goal of maximizing longterm marketshare. One of the easiest examples of this is water [1] because it's a relatively low-labor, low-processing industry. Yet a bottle of water in the West tends to cost about 700% more than a bottle of water in Asia. As a result of this I can buy a bottle of water in the middle of the desert in the Mideast for a tiny fraction of what I'd pay in Michigan which, alone, has ~20% of the entire world's fresh water supply. This is also why GDP is extremely misleading. PPP is supposed to account for these differences but often is often wrong by a rather wide margin for many critical industries. [1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/bottled-water-cost-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/bottled-w...
  • Peteragain 2y ago
    Good point. Capitalism's fundamental is RoI, and in China the time scale is "forever" while in the venture capital market it's 5 years max.
    • vaccineai 2y ago
      Chinese government only thinks in terms of months, not forever. Why do you think they overbuilt housing and crashed the economy? It's because the government officials want to quickly cash out and escape to other countries.
      • Daishiman 2y ago
        Building out more high-speed rail interconnections than any other part in the world is a well-known sign of a country that thinks short-term.
        • vaccineai 2y ago
          Building out mostly unused high-speed rail interconnections and being in debt is a well-known sign of a country that thinks short-term. the local government gets paid for building these useless rails out. China Sees More Stations Shut Down as High-Speed Rail Debt Crisis Deepens https://english.pardafas.com/china-sees-more-stations-shut-down-as-high-speed-rail-debt-crisis-deepens/ https://english.pardafas.com/china-sees-more-stations-shut-d... China’s High-Speed Rail Is Dead: Over 4,000 Ghostly Stations, Billions Spent, No Passengers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhclmurNUuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhclmurNUuw
• ygouzerh 2y ago
  In a world based on mutual respects instead of trading wars, there should be no point to redo everything again in every country. If one country is very good at doing something, why try to re-implement it again?
  • anonzzzies 2y ago
    That doesn't exist though; politician use globalism to paint all negative stuff (immigration, inflation, wars, climate change, whatever), people (including them) start to believe in it and there we are. Every rich country/country group will need to implement everything (energy, military, tech, food, health, etc) themselves to sustain themselves and 'normally' drive trade to cut prices but at any moment be able to fold into itself again.
    • OvidNaso 2y ago
      Well we're finding out right now aren't we. Funny enough the guy who had such the beautiful vision that humanity was meant for the stars is at the center of disproving his life's work and cementing that were doomed for domestic squabbles until the end.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• logifail 2y ago
  > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? Of course we've asked ourselves that, we know the answers too! Manufacturing costs are so low, and the cost of shipping is so low. I recently made contact with a manufacturer at a trade fair in Europe. I was wanting a sample of their product, they had one at their stand - I had it in my hands - but due to time constraints we didn't have time to seal the deal on the day and I had to leave town. So they ended up taking the item all the way back to Asia, and then a week or so later air-freighted it all the way back to Europe. Shipping cost was approx USD55, they shipped it out on a Friday, it was delivered on the Monday.
• altairprime 2y ago
  The opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the necessary prereqs to launch such startups are no longer present. US political leaders and businesses responsible for fiscal policy and (anti-)taxation lobbying do not consider “investment in education of industrial workers” to be a relevant enough factor in domestic manufacturing security to be worth taxing, spending, or lobbying for. The fiscal climate for launching new businesses of this sort is also now extremely hostile; entrepreneurs are expected to self-fund their businesses, which is now due to wage deflation wholly incompatible with high-capex industries like electronics; or to persuade a VC investor to bet on them, which is how we get Juicero; or to pursue subscription-based revenues, which is how we get the Cricut revolt of a couple years back; or to persuade a bank to take a risk on a large capex loan with uncertain outcomes, when banks can make more reliable money gambling on financial derivatives and government bailouts and monetary policy does not compel them to loan out excess reserves. This is the long con of Reagan in the 80s: extracting value and diverting profits from households to shareholders will only get you a few decades before the last well-trained, well-funded workforce ages out and no one’s left to prop up the scam. In SimCity terms, the US is collapsing from High-Density Industrial to Medium-Density Industrial because all the schools had their funding cut for 50 years while the city budget has Commercial taxes set to 0%. The solutions are similarly apparent to any SimCity player, but deeply unpalatable for the real-world beneficiaries — the 0.1% — that are now accustomed to their diverted income. Ironically, one of the best ways to learn more about the grifter’s mindset is to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; not because she proposed a workable solution or because it’s a good or bad novel, but because her portrayal of the grifter sociopathy is dead-on accurate for what we now see happening. Or, watch the TV show Leverage; the villains are often a stellar model of the same.
• leric 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Animats 2y ago
  There are US PCB makers who do prototypes. Sierra Circuits [1] is in Sunnyvale, CA. Pentalogix is near Portland, OR.[2] But 5 small boards will cost about US$75 each. [1] https://www.protoexpress.com https://www.protoexpress.com [2] https://www.pentalogix.com/ https://www.pentalogix.com/
• bsdice 2y ago
  Check AislerHQ on Twitter, based in Germany and should not be affected from the block. No affiliation except that I like to look at naked PCBs.
• mschuster91 2y ago
  > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? We have our own PCB shops but they are like double or quadruple the price of Chinese shops because of labor costs and a lack of investment capital to introduce automation. > Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? As said, extremely low labor costs plus ecosystem efficiencies. When the shop making capacitors by the container load is one block away there's barely any handling effort or stockpiling required, whereas domestic Western shops have to keep much more stockpiles.
• MSFT_Edging 2y ago
  > The question is how did we let it go this far? I've tried to get PCBs fab'd stateside and I think its multidimensional. I didn't NEED to get them made stateside, but I wanted to try. The price for a board for a run of ~150 fairly simple PCBs was 2-3x what the chinese fabs offered. On top of that, American fabs are typically for ITAR/defense contract work. They'll snub their nose at small orders, give you the runaround, etc. When working with Chinese fabs, the main downside is the time difference. JLC and PCBWay have both been great to work with, offer a good price, especially for a hobbyist(which is important if you want more hardware R&D).
• beej71 2y ago
  > The question is how did we let it go this far? It's an optimized market, isn't it? Didn't it naturally go this far?
• ge96 2y ago
  OSHPark but more expensive
• 486sx33 2y ago
  Apple uses fedex straight from Shanghai I’m sure that’s an option too
• ruskyhacker 2y ago
  I believe the answer is "economies of scale"
• corimaith 2y ago
  The other posters are describing the state of China right now, so I'll describe things on a more macroeconomic perspective. The lack of manufacturing in the US can be linked to the lack of investment from the low savings rate as the flipside of high consumption, and a strong dollar (relative to surplus countries like China) that both boosts imports, driving consumption even higher than lowering savings rate, and weak export competiveness. That lack of savings manifests as the Current Account Deficit, and normally the dollar should weaken due to it, strengthening exports and naturally rebalancing the trade. Unfortunately, because the rest of the world does the opposite in having an abnormally high level of savings, they push all their capital into the USA. This overall appreciates the dollar, and is good for the finance industry, but persistently doing this for 40 years has basically destroyed US manufacturing.