Thread

1. ac29 · 1786033928 · focus · HN ↗

   Any idea what pricing will be like? The fact that you call out Drone and Defense industries on your page suggests to me this is extremely expensive.

   I recently priced out getting a PCB done in China and its insanely cheap. My design isnt complicated, a few ICs, a few connectors, an a dozen or so passives. PCB manufacturing, parts, and soldering/assembly is on the order of $10-20 total per board and that is with zero volume discounts. The parts alone would cost that much in the US, and I suspect the sort of companies that you contract out to also aren't really interested in tiny orders so they would probably quote huge setup fees (looks like your average order so far is ~$7000).

   1. ford · 1786042826 · focus · HN ↗

      I'll hijack this point to talk about robotics - I think we agree 1) It's not ideal for China to control production for _all_ of the things we use here.

      2) What they already are good at they'll continue to improve at, because of domain knowledge & ecosystem

      3) The reason they are ahead in the first place is labor cost & the QOL workers will tolerate (and intentional government investment)

      4) The only way around this is for the US to invest into robotics (labor) & subsidize american manufacturing (ecosystem)

      1. willcarkner · 1786043100 · focus · HN ↗

         Agreed completely. The recent bans are one way of doing this but not the most sustainable long term at all.

         We have two options, give up and allow China to control all production, or start the hard battle to improve manufacturing here.

      2. veqq · 1786043829 · focus · HN ↗

         > The reason they are ahead in the first place is labor cost & the QOL workers will tolerate

         That hasn't been accurate in a decade. Chinese labor costs have been higher than Mexico since before Covid. They have more efficient firms, business processes and so much more. The parenthesized "(and intentional government investment)" is related to how they developed nimbler systems, but ignores the totality of industrial policy.

         1. willcarkner · 1786043989 · focus · HN ↗

            In this case specifically they also have a huge amount of automation and process learnings from being around for 20+ years.
      3. apercu · 1786043961 · focus · HN ↗

         I totally agree that we need to reinvigorate manufacturing in the US and that it’s going to take the government (federal level) to make this happen. But for some reason we’d rather give those tax dollars to billionaires and elect incompetents like the current president.

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