Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen

Re:Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen by coryrc on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @03:06AM (#5096110)

If you are building a product, you don't really want to be using rare ICs. When you are making a decent number, you don't want to always be hunting for reliable suppliers (i.e. counterfeited SD cards http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022 ). I like that when I'm buying parts from Digikey, I get what I actually ordered. When or if I want to take my chances and cut costs, I have the option to have it built overseas. But prototyping parts cost is a rounding error in any decent product run.

Oh, and spend 'boatloads of money on overnight shipping' -- $65. How much is a programmer per hour in Silicon Valley?

You could also move to Thief River Falls :)

I like buying cheap junk from dealextreme, but when I need something reliable that'll be around for a while, I'm glad to pay more for something from a real company.

Also, SparkFun has a few pick&place and I know a few people with them around, being used to varying levels.

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Re:Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @08:38AM (#5097015)

You could also move to Thief River Falls :)

I laughed at that, even with the smiley. I live about 6 hours from Thief River Falls (home of DigiKey) and it's about -12F here right now at 7:30AM. Just checked the Thief River Falls weather and it's a balmy -24F there right now.

I don't think we'll be seeing a flood of Bay Area HN'ers moving here any time soon :-)

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Re:Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen by akiselev on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @02:46PM (#5099138)

When you're getting ready to do massive runs, yes, you want to make sure your ICs are common, have pin-equivalent drop in replacements, and can be sourced from a reliable distributor. But that's not the point since such a run would take weeks or months anyway, more than enough time to properly source everything.

However, there's still no "3d printer equivalent" for electronics prototyping especially when using BGAs.

I've paid way more than $65 for overnight shipping from Digikey, Mouser, Arrow NAC, etc. Especially when ordering from multiple distributors (for some reason it always seems that my kits end up being a 90:10 split between Digikey:Mouser).

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Re:Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen by dear on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @04:04AM (#5096249)

"Rare" is a relative term and is location dependent.

If I am an enthusiastic DIY'er, I want my parts now, not tomorrow.

Also I wonder where Digikey gets their "reliable" parts from.

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Re:Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen by AlexDanger on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @06:57AM (#5096659)

I'm sure consumer electronic companies had the same debate 20 years ago with the same arguments.

As you say, there are clear cases where this cheap overseas model isnt going to work. But to dismiss them completely is like saying Kickstarter is no good for video games because AAA publishing houses already exist.

Low volume cheap prototyping or niche manufacturing is an area ripe for disruption. Actually its not even disruption since AFAIK there are no established players (in the West at least).

People like the OP's Maker seem to be driving the way for low cost, low volume electronics. 3D printing seems to be slowly leading the way towards cheap custom molds for enclosures. Once the two meet....

Personally I welcome the revolution.

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