6 ms·

Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

156 points by kentlyons 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago
He's living a small dream of mine.
zyang 14y ago
花小钱,赚大钱 actually translates to, "you got to spend money to make money". Subtleties in the Chinese language.
- dsrguru 14y ago
  Well, there's also the size nuance here -- that you need to spend far less than you'll end up earning. For the non-Chinese speakers out there, it literally means "Spend [a] small [amount of] money, make big money," with the same implication found in the techie epigram "Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning."
  - rexreed 14y ago
    It roughly correlates to the expression, 'It takes a little bit of money to make a lot of money' -- implying the need to spend a little and also the contrast in relative quantities.
olalonde 14y ago
For those who are interested in Shenzhen's DIY scene, I suggest you take a look at http://www.szdiy.org/ http://www.szdiy.org/. There is also a Freenode channel #szdiy (which is not very active).
ghshephard 14y ago
Nice timing - I just heard about "Pick and Place" machines on the "New Disruptors" podcast. Turns out, for relatively small volume, you can build your own manufacturing line with a dozen or so of these devices.
akiselev 14y ago
Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical engineering in the United States. Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of money on overnight shipping (and get the order in before _ pm) or... well... there is no other option as pending time going to Jameco or Halted would likely be wasted, especially with even slightly uncommon or specialized parts. In Shenzhen, however, everything is within reach and ridiculously fast. All of the factories and assembly houses are there and they even have malls that contain just about every electronics part you can imagine so if you need some rare IC you are almost guaranteed to have it the same day. Not to mention the EE communities like bbs.eetop.cn which contain not only software that is almost impossible to find through English channels (stuff that is prohibitively expensive specifically), but also many many datasheets and documentation that is usually under NDA and can sometimes be impossible to get if you can't convince the manufacturer that you might buy tens or hundreds of thousands of chips in the future. What strikes me is how practical this guy's setup is. He isn't a Maker, he is a hobbyist manufacturer. I don't often see DIY pick n places and other more industrial manufacturing equipment this side of the Pacific (although this may just be a result of my ignorance).
- alaskamiller 14y ago
  Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagine the number of cycles microevolution that can be achieved throughout a single year.
  - i386 14y ago
    > Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms I sympathise with your intent but that sounds like a sweatshop to me.
jtchang 14y ago
Major props to Mr. Chen. Just because we think Silicon Valley is the hotbed of innovation doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere. In fact I'd wager that a large part of the silicon valley culture is getting set in their ways and not willing to experiment with truly disruptive ideas.
mads 14y ago
I live in Shenzhen, have good sourcing relationships and know my way around the various electronics markets, so if anybody needs a thrustworthy contact in this part of the world, feel free to write me. I am from Denmark originally and I live and work in shenzhen in the mobile phone industry.
- kanzure 14y ago
  You don't have any contact info in your profile.
  - mads 14y ago
    Oh.. thanks :) Thought my email was visible.
    - kokey 14y ago
      perhaps obscure your email address a bit so you get less automated enlargement spam
- olalonde 14y ago
  I also live in Shenzhen (originally from Canada). Would be cool to hang out some day.
svachalek 14y ago
Awesome. I went to Huaqiangbei while I tagged along on my wife's business trip in Shenzhen and hoped to see some of the work guys like Mr. Chen are doing. Unfortunately being foreign there apparently screams "corporate buyer" and it reminded me a little of the old days of Circuit City when you'd be the only guy in the store and 25 bored, commissioned sales guys descended upon you.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
I read this and realised I had not yet managed to join the 21 st Century. yet here in the UK I am a supposedly cutting edge developer - open source, experienced et al. I need to run faster to catch up - and the whole country needs to run like Usain
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
In the UK there is a show called "The Jeremy Kyle Show". where stupid ugly people come on stage to blame each other for various family squabbles in the name of entertainment. I caught 30 secs of it just after watching the OP video and realised that the old refrain "stealing our jobs" is not true - the Jeremy Kyle show fodder did not and would never have a job as a short run PCB manufacturer. I do not know how we will share the wealth that the next generation of technology will generate, but I do know that 100 years ago Britain nearly revolted against a social system where the upper classes "worked not nor did they sow" - and now we shall have a class of people who cannot work nor sow. It's an old meme in HN it just hit me this morning a bit harder
- UweSchmidt 14y ago
  I believe that in former times the number of uneducated people with few skills were much higher than today. Unlike today there were plenty of jobs for those who had no education nor skills. Only the difficulty with finding gainful employment for those people - and the need for founders, makers etc. - draws our attention to them in the first place (a microtrend of glorification of those people through shows like the one you've mentioned nonwithstanding). Regarding the upper class who does not work that maybe the trust fund kids?
_k 14y ago
It's not that unusual. Lots of companies start out the way this guy did. This happens all over the world, not just in China. In order to scale things up, you either rely on manual labor or automated machinery. And you can outsource both.
gbog 14y ago
Nice to see an article about China here. When I read Fred Wilson or Paul Graham I always wonder what they think about China and all the weird stuff happening in this country, but they seem either uninterested or deaf.
Fundlab 14y ago
I put a similar setup together through http://buildyourcnc.com/PickandPlaceMachineTheredFrog.aspx http://buildyourcnc.com/PickandPlaceMachineTheredFrog.aspx

156 points by kentlyons 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago

He's living a small dream of mine.

zyang 14y ago

花小钱,赚大钱 actually translates to, "you got to spend money to make money". Subtleties in the Chinese language.

dsrguru 14y ago
Well, there's also the size nuance here -- that you need to spend far less than you'll end up earning. For the non-Chinese speakers out there, it literally means "Spend [a] small [amount of] money, make big money," with the same implication found in the techie epigram "Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning."
- rexreed 14y ago
  It roughly correlates to the expression, 'It takes a little bit of money to make a lot of money' -- implying the need to spend a little and also the contrast in relative quantities.

olalonde 14y ago

For those who are interested in Shenzhen's DIY scene, I suggest you take a look at http://www.szdiy.org/ http://www.szdiy.org/. There is also a Freenode channel #szdiy (which is not very active).

ghshephard 14y ago

Nice timing - I just heard about "Pick and Place" machines on the "New Disruptors" podcast. Turns out, for relatively small volume, you can build your own manufacturing line with a dozen or so of these devices.

akiselev 14y ago

Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical engineering in the United States. Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of money on overnight shipping (and get the order in before _ pm) or... well... there is no other option as pending time going to Jameco or Halted would likely be wasted, especially with even slightly uncommon or specialized parts. In Shenzhen, however, everything is within reach and ridiculously fast. All of the factories and assembly houses are there and they even have malls that contain just about every electronics part you can imagine so if you need some rare IC you are almost guaranteed to have it the same day. Not to mention the EE communities like bbs.eetop.cn which contain not only software that is almost impossible to find through English channels (stuff that is prohibitively expensive specifically), but also many many datasheets and documentation that is usually under NDA and can sometimes be impossible to get if you can't convince the manufacturer that you might buy tens or hundreds of thousands of chips in the future. What strikes me is how practical this guy's setup is. He isn't a Maker, he is a hobbyist manufacturer. I don't often see DIY pick n places and other more industrial manufacturing equipment this side of the Pacific (although this may just be a result of my ignorance).

alaskamiller 14y ago
Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms, imagine if RadioShack and Fry's makes a comeback and returns to their roots of supplying bare parts, imagine if 3D printers become affordable and everywhere, imagine if crowd funding sites can wire funds within a day, imagine if the distribution channels can also mail out products the next day. Imagine the number of cycles microevolution that can be achieved throughout a single year.
- i386 14y ago
  > Imagine if the massive empty complexes along the 101 in Silicon Valley gets repurposed to be hacker spaces and dorms I sympathise with your intent but that sounds like a sweatshop to me.

jtchang 14y ago

Major props to Mr. Chen. Just because we think Silicon Valley is the hotbed of innovation doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere. In fact I'd wager that a large part of the silicon valley culture is getting set in their ways and not willing to experiment with truly disruptive ideas.

mads 14y ago

I live in Shenzhen, have good sourcing relationships and know my way around the various electronics markets, so if anybody needs a thrustworthy contact in this part of the world, feel free to write me. I am from Denmark originally and I live and work in shenzhen in the mobile phone industry.

kanzure 14y ago
You don't have any contact info in your profile.
- mads 14y ago
  Oh.. thanks :) Thought my email was visible.
  - kokey 14y ago
    perhaps obscure your email address a bit so you get less automated enlargement spam
olalonde 14y ago
I also live in Shenzhen (originally from Canada). Would be cool to hang out some day.

svachalek 14y ago

Awesome. I went to Huaqiangbei while I tagged along on my wife's business trip in Shenzhen and hoped to see some of the work guys like Mr. Chen are doing. Unfortunately being foreign there apparently screams "corporate buyer" and it reminded me a little of the old days of Circuit City when you'd be the only guy in the store and 25 bored, commissioned sales guys descended upon you.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

I read this and realised I had not yet managed to join the 21 st Century. yet here in the UK I am a supposedly cutting edge developer - open source, experienced et al. I need to run faster to catch up - and the whole country needs to run like Usain

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

In the UK there is a show called "The Jeremy Kyle Show". where stupid ugly people come on stage to blame each other for various family squabbles in the name of entertainment. I caught 30 secs of it just after watching the OP video and realised that the old refrain "stealing our jobs" is not true - the Jeremy Kyle show fodder did not and would never have a job as a short run PCB manufacturer. I do not know how we will share the wealth that the next generation of technology will generate, but I do know that 100 years ago Britain nearly revolted against a social system where the upper classes "worked not nor did they sow" - and now we shall have a class of people who cannot work nor sow. It's an old meme in HN it just hit me this morning a bit harder

UweSchmidt 14y ago
I believe that in former times the number of uneducated people with few skills were much higher than today. Unlike today there were plenty of jobs for those who had no education nor skills. Only the difficulty with finding gainful employment for those people - and the need for founders, makers etc. - draws our attention to them in the first place (a microtrend of glorification of those people through shows like the one you've mentioned nonwithstanding). Regarding the upper class who does not work that maybe the trust fund kids?

_k 14y ago

It's not that unusual. Lots of companies start out the way this guy did. This happens all over the world, not just in China. In order to scale things up, you either rely on manual labor or automated machinery. And you can outsource both.

gbog 14y ago

Nice to see an article about China here. When I read Fred Wilson or Paul Graham I always wonder what they think about China and all the weird stuff happening in this country, but they seem either uninterested or deaf.

Fundlab 14y ago

I put a similar setup together through http://buildyourcnc.com/PickandPlaceMachineTheredFrog.aspx http://buildyourcnc.com/PickandPlaceMachineTheredFrog.aspx