[Noisebridge-discuss] Noisebridge China Trip

Mitch Altman maltman23 at hotmail.com
Fri Nov 6 06:31:34 UTC 2009


Hi Everyone,

 

I got back from China on Tuesday, and am over the worst of the jet-lag by now.  

 

For those who know about the trip, and just want a link to some cool photos, here's a link to mine:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maltman23/sets/72157622640069902

to bernieS'

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maltman23/sets/72157622640132088/

and to some of Christoph's:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maltman23/sets/72157622663663856/

For other peoples' photos and comments, do a search for "NBChina09" on flickr.com (and twitter, and other places).

 



 

I went to China to visit my manufacturer, and (taking a cue from Bunnie Huang, who created a manufacturing trip to China that got a lot of attention <http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/shenzhen/>) took along the first 7 people who bought their plane tickets to China, so anyone interested could learn about the manufacturing process (and check out bits of China).  More on the trip is on the Noisebridge wiki:

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/ChinaTrip

 

The trip was fantastic!  

 

We first visited Shanghai, where my contract manufacturer does it's lower volume production, where we saw how PC Boards were made, how mass volume printing is done, how high-speed surface mount PCBs are stuffed with parts, how extra parts are hand-assembled on an assembly line, how plastic parts (such as cases for gadgets) are made, and saw how finished items are packaged and shipped.

      

 

We also paid a visit to the Shanghai Electronics Mall, which is really an entire area of Shanghai devoted to parts for making things.  All sorts of parts!  LEDs, motors, microcontrollers, any electronic parts you can imagine and then some, knobs, springs, magnets, mechanics of all kinds, plastic enclosures, test equipment, wire, and on and on and on.  All for really good prices (if you enjoy haggling).

      

 

We were also all amazed at how quickly the Chinese took to capitalism.

    

 

We then went to Jining (about half way from Shanghai to Beijing), where my contract manufacturer does it's high-volume mass production.  It was a Sunday, so we only saw a skeleton crew who volunteered to be paid double-time to show us how they manufacture LED lamps for coal-mining.

    

 

We were also fed very well (even us vegetarian and vegan folks) everywhere we went!

    

 

We then played tourist in Beijing for the last 9 days of our trip.

      

 

Anyone who wants to go next year, stay tuned for when I visit my manufacturer again.

 

Cheers,

Mitch.

  

 

 

 
 		 	   		  
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