The vast majority of housefires caused by 3D printers are caused by the budget printers coming out of China. It's a real issue, and it's cost people their homes and their possessions. The Anet A8 in particular has been very bad about this. The Creality CR-10 had some issues as well. The Ender 3 that several people have referred to in here has some additional protections, especially with the newest firmware, but I would be hesitant with the track record and huge lag time on putting thermal runway protection into their devices.
I don't think anyone is saying that China is incapable of creating high quality products - they very obviously are. But being capable of doing something doesn't mean that that is the product strategy being employed, or that if it is being employed, that it's the only or most popular one.
I would absolutely trust a 3D printer manufactured in China from a company that used quality component and put thought into safety from the start. I've put my money where my mouth is, and own a Milkshake3D (granted, it is an SLA printer and not FDM.) But I wouldn't purchase one of the budget FDM printers manufactured in China at this point in time. If Creality's printers look to hold up well with the new protections, I might reconsider them in the future.
I made a comment referencing Chinese companies on this page...
It has nothing to do with racism, there's an obvious strategy most of them shared in the 3d printer space, and that was slap their name on a random 3d printer using the cheapest possible materials to get to a feature list
Search and see how many no-name printers are using exactly the same displays and various bits from the "named" Chinese sourced 3d printers.
There are definitely companies in China being more selective than average now. Creality printers started off looking just like no name copies with slight changes, but they've been starting to innovate a bit more of late.
But it's not at all shocking, or racist, that people would group a market that operates in a certain way.
It's no more racist than saying SV tech companies vs Eastern European tech companies, we know they have differing cultures
"Yes, China may be a brutal, authoritarian, oppressive regime currently trying to censor discussion of their occupation of Hong Kong - but at least they provide cheap manual labor due to lax labor laws, a disregard for the environment, and the general poverty of their people."
Chinese labour isn't particularly cheap by global standards, especially in Shenzhen and the wider PRD region. We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.
Apple products could be built anywhere, but only because Apple have absolutely vast economies of scale. Most consumer electronics products couldn't be built anywhere else at a viable price, not because of labour costs but because of infrastructure. China has the supply chains and the expertise to build anything from a handful of PCBs to a couple of million units. There's just nowhere else on earth where you can set up several assembly lines in a few weeks or get a prototype built and tested in a few hours.
> We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.
I suspect it's the other way around. The supply chains, manufacturing expertise, automation, and skilled labour that are now China's main advantages were created through decades of investment that began with a search for cheap labour, and gradually crept up the value chain.
30 years ago in 1989, you would have said that you outsource manufacturing to Japan because they're "damned good at it". Only the very cheapest products would have been outsourced to China at that time. The skilled labour and supply chains weren't there.
30 years before that, in 1959, you would have looked to the US for a force that was "damned good at manufacturing". Only the cheapest products would have been outsourced to Japan.
Basically you start setting up factories making cheap stuff. Then as you gain skill and expertise, your quality gets better faster than your prices go up. The expensive countries see how much they can save by outsourcing more and more of their supply chain to you, and in the process their domestic supply chain dwindles and their skilled labour retires or gets laid off.
Eventually, you're the only choice for anything, until someone cheaper shows up to undercut you on the cheaper stuff...
>I suspect it's the other way around. The supply chains, manufacturing expertise, automation, and skilled labour that are now China's main advantages were created through decades of investment that began with a search for cheap labour, and gradually crept up the value chain.
Of course China started at the bottom of the value chain and moved up. The point I'm making is that China is no longer just a mass of undifferentiated cheap labour and low legal standards - it's a serious industrial power with a lot of unique strengths. A lot of low-skill, low-cost manufacturing has already left China in search of cheaper labour, but China is likely to remain a powerhouse in many industries for the foreseeable future. They're heavily investing in automation and are well-equipped to remain competitive despite rising labour costs.
I didn't mean to come across as disagreeing with you about China's strengths. I fully agree with what you have written -- but it's also exactly the same thing we could have said about Japan in 1989 or the USA in 1959. Right down to investing heavily in automation and being well equipped to remain competitive despite rising labour costs.
And Japan still makes a lot of top-notch stuff, and even the USA does too, although neither are the obvious go-to places to get something made, which they used to be.
The same thing may well happen with China; their integrated domestic supply chain and expertise are huge advantages, but the same used to be the case in the USA and that didn't stop companies from looking elsewhere.
At the same time, Chinese companies have noticed that they don't have to be anybody's contract manufacturers; they can design products faster and better than engineers in the USA who have never visited a production floor in their lives. And so it goes...
> We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.
They are now. They were not when outsourcing began.
And that amazing "supply chain" relies on the fact that the West consumes large amounts of expensive consumer goods continuously. Consequently, the parts flow continuously and are consumed without need for inventory. If manufacturers start moving out of China, the parts flow will stop, inventory will back up, and the supply chain will dry up and blow away post haste as everybody heads for the door to avoid being the one holding the bag.
Many things in manufacturing rely on flywheel inertia to keep going. When the flywheel hiccups, the stuff upstream crashes to a halt.
This comment misses the point I made entirely. People are making gross over generalizations about "The Chinese". I made no statements about consumerism, authoritarianism, or capitalism. Apple products could come out of anywhere (but they don't, they come from China), I use that example as a counterpoint to people talking about "what The Chinese" are capable of. Your quotes around the text are supposed to be done in my voice? No thanks.
If Uganda or Bangladesh or Libya could make and export vast quantities of cheap consumer electronics, they would. China exports lots of cheap crappy 3d printers because they're the only country on earth with the industrial capacity to make lots of cheap crappy 3d printers. Most of the expensive non-crappy 3d printers are still made in China, because China is really good at making stuff.
Oh, I agree - I don't think Chinese companies make cheap crappy things because they can't make good things. There are clearly many world-class Chinese companies (DJI springs to mind, their stuff is unmatched.)
From what I can see, the issue seems to be lack of trust between companies. If you never know whether you're going to get what you paid for, then the only way to distinguish between suppliers is price and it becomes a race to the bottom.
This lines up with the fact that most high end Chinese companies seem to be vertically integrated monoliths, which own the entire supply chain and so can control quality.
These threads are always a strange and uncomfortable bridge between valid criticism (many products made in China are cheap and break easily, the Chinese government uncomfortably authoritarian) and actual racism ("the Chinese" only make cheap shit, Chinese don't care about freedom).
...your "valid criticism" will never escape the constraints of orientalism. racism is not a phenomenon of the individual, it's a class phenomenon owing its modern form to imperialism. racism is the crystallization of chauvinism among those classes who benefit from imperialist policy. words like "authoritarian" are taken for granted even though they have a priori definitions and they absolutely come out of the hegemony of these racist classes. sober study of the real is counterproductive or even impossible for these classes. instead, the labor aristocracy (to which all the users of this site belong) speaks from the soul: "the chinese way of life is incompatible with our democracy." nothing new here. the imperialist class proper happens to agree (https://twitter.com/chinfo/status/1182610604353376257)
Damn I never thought I would run into a tankie on HN. Neat.
Your criticism isn't totally invalid (if unreadable), but not everything is reducible to class. Stop reading weird blogs about how socialist China is and get outside and do some real activism. Sitting around hoping Xie is going to magically do socialism by 2035 isn't praxis.
it doesn't matter if china is socialist or not. no one here actually cares about that. posting anonymously on the internet is clinical for me just like it's clinical for you.
Why do you think I have imperial interests? Is it because you think everyone does? If everyone does, does that mean you do? In that case, what is the answer? Do we just wait around until China somehow out-imperials the US and not be critical of anything? Then, do you think that will really be better?
i come here occasionally to discover the ideological tendencies of programmers (particularly those in the first world proper) because i am objectively part of that globally privileged class. i'm trying to see if this helps me to navigate the day-to-day contradictions between trying to lead a reasonably comfortable life with my family while also working to sincerely study political economy and perhaps also protect those within arm's reach who are endangered by the US. if i post it's because i'm working something out with myself and just playing around with ideas. not a single person will be persuaded by me. but provoking people like you may be instructional, i'm not sure. like i said this is clinical
how about you? why are you spending your weekend telling anonymous tankies to go outside?
