
Meet a Shenzhen Maker: Mr. Chen - kentlyons
http://www.hoektronics.com/2013/01/05/meet-a-shenzhen-maker-mr-chen/
======
akiselev
Reading stories about Shenzhen makes me terrified for the future of electrical
engineering in the United States.

Here in Silicon Valley I often have to wait a week to get a board fabbed and
another week to get it assembled. I usually have to order the parts myself
from Digikey, which takes a few days, and then manually build the kits. If
something goes wrong during the bring up, I need to either spend boatloads of
money on overnight shipping (and get the order in before _ pm) or... well...
there is no other option as pending time going to Jameco or Halted would
likely be wasted, especially with even slightly uncommon or specialized parts.

In Shenzhen, however, everything is within reach and ridiculously fast. All of
the factories and assembly houses are there and they even have malls that
contain just about every electronics part you can imagine so if you need some
rare IC you are almost guaranteed to have it the same day. Not to mention the
EE communities like bbs.eetop.cn which contain not only software that is
almost impossible to find through English channels (stuff that is
prohibitively expensive specifically), but also many many datasheets and
documentation that is usually under NDA and can sometimes be impossible to get
if you can't convince the manufacturer that you might buy tens or hundreds of
thousands of chips in the future.

What strikes me is how practical this guy's setup is. He isn't a Maker, he is
a hobbyist manufacturer. I don't often see DIY pick n places and other more
industrial manufacturing equipment this side of the Pacific (although this may
just be a result of my ignorance).

~~~
coryrc
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.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_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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mads
I live in Shenzhen, have good sourcing relationships and know my way around
the various electronics markets, so if anybody needs a thrustworthy contact in
this part of the world, feel free to write me.

I am from Denmark originally and I live and work in shenzhen in the mobile
phone industry.

~~~
kanzure
You don't have any contact info in your profile.

~~~
mads
Oh.. thanks :)

Thought my email was visible.

~~~
kokey
perhaps obscure your email address a bit so you get less automated enlargement
spam

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jtchang
Major props to Mr. Chen. Just because we think Silicon Valley is the hotbed of
innovation doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere.

In fact I'd wager that a large part of the silicon valley culture is getting
set in their ways and not willing to experiment with truly disruptive ideas.

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lifeisstillgood
I read this and realised I had not yet managed to join the 21 st Century. yet
here in the UK I am a supposedly cutting edge developer - open source,
experienced et al.

I need to run faster to catch up - and the whole country needs to run like
Usain

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zyang
花小钱,赚大钱 actually translates to, "you got to spend money to make money".
Subtleties in the Chinese language.

~~~
dsrguru
Well, there's also the size nuance here -- that you need to spend far less
than you'll end up earning. For the non-Chinese speakers out there, it
literally means "Spend [a] small [amount of] money, make big money," with the
same implication found in the techie epigram "Weeks of coding can save you
hours of planning."

~~~
rexreed
It roughly correlates to the expression, 'It takes a little bit of money to
make a lot of money' -- implying the need to spend a little and also the
contrast in relative quantities.

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olalonde
For those who are interested in Shenzhen's DIY scene, I suggest you take a
look at <http://www.szdiy.org/>. There is also a Freenode channel #szdiy
(which is not very active).

------
svachalek
Awesome. I went to Huaqiangbei while I tagged along on my wife's business trip
in Shenzhen and hoped to see some of the work guys like Mr. Chen are doing.
Unfortunately being foreign there apparently screams "corporate buyer" and it
reminded me a little of the old days of Circuit City when you'd be the only
guy in the store and 25 bored, commissioned sales guys descended upon you.

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lifeisstillgood
In the UK there is a show called "The Jeremy Kyle Show". where stupid ugly
people come on stage to blame each other for various family squabbles in the
name of entertainment.

I caught 30 secs of it just after watching the OP video and realised that the
old refrain "stealing our jobs" is not true - the Jeremy Kyle show fodder did
not and would never have a job as a short run PCB manufacturer.

I do not know how we will share the wealth that the next generation of
technology will generate, but I do know that 100 years ago Britain nearly
revolted against a social system where the upper classes "worked not nor did
they sow" \- and now we shall have a class of people who cannot work nor sow.

It's an old meme in HN it just hit me this morning a bit harder

~~~
UweSchmidt
I believe that in former times the number of uneducated people with few skills
were much higher than today. Unlike today there were plenty of jobs for those
who had no education nor skills. Only the difficulty with finding gainful
employment for those people - and the need for founders, makers etc. - draws
our attention to them in the first place (a microtrend of glorification of
those people through shows like the one you've mentioned nonwithstanding).

Regarding the upper class who does not work that maybe the trust fund kids?

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ghshephard
Nice timing - I just heard about "Pick and Place" machines on the "New
Disruptors" podcast. Turns out, for relatively small volume, you can build
your own manufacturing line with a dozen or so of these devices.

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_k
It's not that unusual. Lots of companies start out the way this guy did. This
happens all over the world, not just in China. In order to scale things up,
you either rely on manual labor or automated machinery. And you can outsource
both.

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gbog
Nice to see an article about China here. When I read Fred Wilson or Paul
Graham I always wonder what they think about China and all the weird stuff
happening in this country, but they seem either uninterested or deaf.

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stephengillie
He's living a small dream of mine.

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Fundlab
I put a similar setup together through
<http://buildyourcnc.com/PickandPlaceMachineTheredFrog.aspx>

