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Comment by petterroea | Hacker News Reader

They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh.

On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

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And he's just making a grill scrubber.

I just ordered a bunch of drone parts. The majority of those part were only available from China.

If you want: motors, ESCs, flight controllers and radios those can be sourced from outside of China, and competitively priced too (if you're in Europe, outside you'd still have to add taxes).

Yeah tbf I wouldn't underestimate Eastern Europe. The drone industry there must be booming nowadays, pun not intended.

It's everywhere. And 'China free' is a real motto here.

I can't install a motto in my drone. None of the alternatives will allow me to put a physical drone part in my hand with any degree of reliability.

How?

As near as I can tell, the vast majority of the parts are made in China. When I look at the few alternatives, they're full of Chinese circuitry. If I look at circuit components, they're all made of Chinese raw materials.

Both Ukraine and Russia are planning to deploy (and use up) several million drones over the next year. Iran just joined them as a major procurer.

Where are all the US and EU component factories?

In Spain, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Do you have any links?

Already in that other comment.

I checked both the links in the other comment.

While they satisfy the technical requirement of, "there exists an alternative" neither of them is generally available as a viable alternative to China.

They are for me.

This whole thread is in response to an attempt to someone trying to source parts to manufacture something in the US.

If "for me" is limited to some rich guy in the Netherlands, that doesn't solve the problem "for anyone else."

Well, we could counter that and say that the whole thread here is exactly about how the US is losing its soft power position and the import situation you are facing is an integral part of that.

And 'some rich guy in the Netherlands' is a nice target for you but I know plenty of people that are in other parts of Europe that seem to have no problem ordering from both of these. You asked for alternatives, you got them. You could have just left it at that but you feel the need to explain why those alternatives are not the alternatives you wanted. What did you expect? A 1-900 number and someone taking your credit card?

You could counter with that or you could read what's actually in this sub-thread.

"Some rich guy in the Netherlands" isn't about being a nice target. You keep saying it works for you but you can't demonstrate any way that works for others.

I can point you to a number of places that sell any number of Chinese drone parts that don't involve a "1-900 number". You can find them on Amazon. Any number of drone vendors sell them through normal sales portals. The manufacturers will ship them directly.

A handful of companies that require a bespoke procurement process and are operating at a tiny fraction of the scale do not have any appreciable impact on the market for drone parts today.

I perused the links that you provided in another comment.

How much of these products are sourced from EU materials? Like is the copper in the wires from the EU? Is the wire made in the EU and coated with insulator there too? Are the motors wound in Europe?

> Like is the copper in the wires from the EU?

Mostly Latin America afaik but copper re-use is so high that it is hard to tell what the original source is.

> Is the wire made in the EU and coated with insulator there too?

Not in the EU but close by.

> Are the motors wound in Europe?

Yes, there are multiple drone motor manufacturers in Europe now. Annual production is in the millions.

It's hard to tell without the spec sheets.

The magnets are almost certainly from China.

The top copper producer in the EU is Poland so that's a possible source of copper. They're pretty far down the list though so it's likely that a large part of the copper is coming from places like Chile (top producer in the world).

The thread is about manufacturing in the US so tariffs do have to be factored in.

On those specific parts:

Motors: T-Motor F90 1300KV - $119.60(incl shipping) + Tariff

ESC: Holybro Tekko32 F4 50A - $88.97(incl shipping) + Tariff

FC: Matek H743-SLIM V4 - £88.12(incl shipping + VAT) + Tariff

Radio: Radiomaster M2 $95.99(incl shipping + sales tax)

The FC was from a UK store but it originated in China. I already had the radio so I don't have current prices on it.

I'd love to find a list of vendors that have comparable parts, in stock, and without being insane multiples of those prices.

edit: formatting

https://motor-g.com/en

https://www.arctus.ai/products

Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine. That's totally understandable but for anyone outside of Ukraine, they effectively don't exist.

Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info. It seems they just raised 2.6M in seed funding 3 months ago. It's great that there are startups in NL but that's not even close to a replacement for China's scale yet.

Both of these may change the landscape in the future. For now, neither of them is a practical way to get drone parts without China.

> Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine.

They absolutely do.

> Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info.

You can order as much as you want from them, the price is right and the quality is extremely high.

Indeed, they're not on AliExpress, but that's roughly the difference between being a producer in Europe and in China, and that is precisely the difference that you should be happy with.

Can you show me? Is this some privileged access that you get as an investor?

Its easy to verify that Motor-g does not ship outside of Ukraine. I just put 4 of their motors in a shopping cart and tried to check out. The drop down menu for destination country has a single option, Ukraine.

Arctus does not list a single price on their website. That's also easy to verify. Every single product on their website only says, "request product data", or "coming soon".

I have both their products quite literally on my desk in front of me.

All I did was mail the manufacturer, asked for a quote, got a mail in return, they sent an invoice, I paid the invoice and they sent me the goods. Just like I would expect.

You claim it works for you.

Can you demonstrate a process that others can follow?

eumotors.eu

I have some friends who are doing things 'China free' and it is possible but it comes at a very substantial premium.

I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.

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