It would be better just to build a Shenzen in the US.
Probably not.
Imagine if you went to a flea market, but instead of comic books, hot dogs and used sofas ... you found all sorts of cheap, exotic component parts. Anything. Everything. For 10's of cents each.
I'm close with a team making a product, and there are a few 'custom-ish' things they need, like a tiny microcontroller with camera that does some very basic processing as a sub-module. In America - that's a big deal. Hire a team, get some researchers to consult, do some iterations yada yada.
In China some guy in a ratty, dirty, poor little corner shop has it! For like 40 cents in units of ONE!
There's a massive 'secondary industry' of people making 'not rocket science but not trivial' gadgetry very fast, and on the cheap that is not going to be duplicated anywhere.
Add in the tons and tons of cheap labour, with few labour laws.
Add in the 10 hours 7 day crazy work weeks.
No - Shenzen will not be duplicated.
That said - it may be possible to expand the Valley in a more 'automated' 'high end' way.
For example: 3D printers that are more amenable to 'short production runs' instead of just prototypes. Low cost / fast turnaround injection moulding. Quick turn around on smaller components.
This might make it better for American firms doing quality high tech to churn out faster prototypes, first production runs, and later automated large runs.
Doing this would take some champion leaders, maybe Cisco, or Google or a few others setting up shop, proving the way for others to follow.
In theory things like 3D printers, pick & place machines, and better CNC millers all controlled by software could help with that, but interest in hardware hacking in the Bay Area has gone down and a lot of the professional electronics manufacturing moved to China.
Isn't this something that Elon Musk is working on? I think I read somewhere that one of the reasons his car factory was so expensive to build is because the robots have the capability to do more than just one thing.
Yes this, is what I failed to mention.
Sounds like how Silicon Valley used to be...
> Add in the 10 hours 7 day crazy work weeks.
These advantages seem like they'll expire as China becomes more competitive economically.
> Imagine if you went to a flea market, but instead of comic books, hot dogs and used sofas ... you found all sorts of cheap, exotic component parts. Anything. Everything. For 10's of cents each.
How many types of sensors / components etc. are even conceivable, no matter how exotic? It seems like someone could replicate that in the US with a warehouse and sourcing. These things are extremely cheap in general; it's not like trying to replicate the VCs of Silicon Valley elsewhere.
> For example: 3D printers that are more amenable to 'short production runs' instead of just prototypes. Low cost / fast turnaround injection moulding. Quick turn around on smaller components. ... Doing this would take some champion leaders, maybe Cisco, or Google
This seems like a great idea; pair some small fabs with a big ol' warehouse stocked with every random component / sensor under the sun, and it seems like it would work out totally fine.
There are an infinite number of module combinations. They all vary in cost, quality, precision, speed, size, materials, performance, suitability for manufacture, and subtly in whatever it is they do.
A commenter above mentioned the vast number of professionals with a ton of know-how in this area, making the 'time to tweak' or 'from nothing to module' and also 'optimized for manufacture' very rapid. There's nothing remotely like it anywhere.
This already exists in the North American market, I.E. Protolabs
Protolabs is nothing special really.
The tech everyone uses for 3D printing, for quick turnaround injection moulding ... it's mostly the same old stuff.
3D printing is only good for a few units, unless what your making is very small and very expensive.
Custom moulding is still a big leap - and if there are any iterations (and there will be) it's not cheap.
And all of the 'fine' stuff is still done by hand.
So I see 3 roadblocks:
1) Rapid iteration and availability of component parts 2) True cheap way to get from 10 to 20000 units i.e. before true mass production 3) 'programmable robot hands' i.e. a very easy to program robot arm/hands that is nimble enough to fold and cut fabric, assemble arbitrary things, wipe/clean surfaces.
Here's an example, although perhaps a little big: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDUn3CoVmuc
Looks quite saleable to me. Maybe sand blasting would improve the finish.
The real plus China having Taobao.. like eBay, but with every imaginable component you could need, and five different Chinese clones of it at 20% of the original component cost, all available at wholesale prices, in quantities of 1 or 100,000. The Shenzhen markets are still active, but shrinking.. you can usually find more variety, faster, cheaper, online. You can hand your BOM over to an agent on Taobao, and he'll get the parts together for you and ship them over.. it might cost 1/4 of the price of Digikey.
Off the shelf electronics are good for some things ... not so much for others.
Glad to see someone trying it!
I also found that they aren't all that amenable to finding the most efficient route using stock material. E.g., on one job, I just wanted a stamped or laser-cut hole pattern in stock aluminum, so I specified the stock thickness in that field and commented in the notes what I was seeking. I got back a quote for basically CNC milling the exact part out of billet. Lovely, but completely unnecessary, and it didn't improve chatting with the rep. I would up fabricating the parts out of carbon fiber and CNC cutting the shapes/holes myself (all in-house).
So, yes, I'd say that the Shenzen flea-market mentioned above could be really cool, is definitely not here yet, and is sadly unlikely...
(Edit: typo, dropped words)
Really though I think fast shipping will suffice for most people. Once we get delivery down to under an hour, in city, with reasonable component prices, we should be able to source what we need easily enough. I'm imagining something like jimmyjohns meets sparkfun (and now I'm drooling).
PACKAGING.
Fucking packaging kills "hobby" interests.
Radio shack became "random aisle from fry's electronics" pretty easily. Fry's is complicit in the murder of radio shack -- but the fact that they individually began packaging everything and selling things as expensive individual components in blister/cardboard crap - rather than in a much more organic manner really limited the Hacker energy.
They attempted to bolt themselves to the "charging cable industry" -- (which deserves its own place in tech hell) -- and that failed.
They were then reduced to a charicature of themselves when they were selling 'MAKE::' kits...
I lament for the sould of what Radio Shack once could have been...
Things like Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, 3D printers, Linux, etc. arguably made a new generation of hardware hacking possible but those came later.
The way around this IMO was if they had added a in store pickup + some large regional warehouses. Free/Discounted next day shipping to the store of your choice or more to your house, could have really enabled hobbyists without costing the company much. In larger markets they could have even done some same day shipping to stores.
Later, as I get more advanced, yes, I can see the online vendors making more sense.
Nice documentary on Shenzhen if you want to learn more about its history, culture, and advantages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY
In the U.S., you get this instead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Motorola_In....
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-27/oracle-wi...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/04/ibm-b...
EDIT: Looks like the efficiency comes at a high price.
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Welp, about 50 years of cheap, environmentally catastrophic manufacturing (lack of) regulations, a vast army of poor/slave-subsistence-level farmers who can CHEAPLY provide food - no IP laws, a mass ability to gather/import raw materials - hazardous working conditions, cancer, cancer, cancer - slaves, and a gumption of a population with a striving for life that is not nearly as lazy and entitled as anyone else on the planet.
Just a start...
OTOH, a nice fat tariff on things you want to manufacture, and suddenly manufacturing them at home starts to make strong economic sense. Of course as evidence suggests that you also need a large enough market to assure that your not just paying 100x as much to support some inefficient factory.
Worse, tariffs tend to work if your protecting an existing industry from dumping/etc, not so much if your trying to grow one.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/18027032/foxconn-wiscons...
Kenosha-Racine just did not have the number and kind of workers required for the original promises to hold water, and the subsequent revisions only got more ridiculous. For brainy, high-tech work, the only nearby choices are Madison and Chicago. It has always been hyperbole and lies, told to sway votes. The powers behind it didn't expect to lose their statewide offices this quickly, though, so I'm not sure if their plan for the Foxconn site is still viable.