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MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
51–60 of 112 posts
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#52Amazing that it costs less to manufacture and package something, then ship it thousands of miles on a boat, unload it and it's way cheaper than making the same product in the USA.
Kindof makes you think there's something else going on. Currency? Regulation? Global forces?
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#53Too bad I thought it had finally gathered the ability to manufacture itself. Turns out the owners suck, too bad.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#54Totally understand being disappointed in MakerBot for a myriad of other reasons. But the whole, "omg stuff is going to be shitty because its Chinese" is a tired old trope. If you know what you are doing and aren't needlessly cutting corners you should be fine. P.S: Not Chinese, I've just enjoyed enough Chinese mfg'd (even Chinese designed) products now to know that trope is old.
I've gotten about half my wardrobe from AliExpress, and I look like a million bucks.
The stigma is for the uneducated. Cheap knockoffs will be cheap. But if you know how to spend and where to spend it in China — regardless of industry — you will get amazing quality for the price.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#55Of course they are. It's been lies and flim flam for a while. Worst printers on the market, just look at the reviews. They had US manufacturing going for them, but I guess even that much of their previous reputation, honor, and pride was too much to hold on to.
So what would you say is the best 3D printer on the market right now?
I'd say take a look at Re:3D's products.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
GPL doesn't even protect against this kind of situation. The copyright holder is not bound by the GPL license, they are the one licensing it. Anything release under the GPL is still available as GPL, but the copyright holder has no obligation to release future changes under the GPL. They can instead have a proprietary license. Things can get a little more muddied with community contributions as the contributor owns t…
Extrusion 3D printers derive from the research of the RepRap project, by Bowyer of Bath University, it is GPL. The MakerBot derives from this GPLed work - the first MakerBot parts were printed by a RepRap. This is a RepRap tradition that a RepRap print the parts for new RepRaps, a ceremonial self replication. So the MakerBot's intellectual property is not wholly their own and in fact is derives from a GPL licensed wo…
They changed the design when they closed things up. As it's not a derived work, there's not a violation.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#57A lot of people wonder why large companies can't just stay in the US and compete on quality, and here is a great case for why. It doesn't matter how great your workers are, you can't sell a product for $3,000 when others are selling it for $600. Especially when it's a technology still in development. And I know we pay extra for the warm and fuzzies knowing that something is made in the states, but I'm sure the home t…
I often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.
There's no argument here for not relocating to an even less expensive geography than the one you've mentioned here.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
The challenge is still that you can build ANYTHING in China and if you can get the same quality and lower prices significantly, why would you choose a middle of the road solution in the US? I think the cost differential still overrides any sort of boost you might have from having a Made in the USA stamp on the machine.
> if you can get the same quality That's a pretty big if. But truth be told, most things don't need to be ultra-high-quality with ultra-tight tolerances.
I'm pretty convinced that you can get any quality you're willing to specify, pay for, and inspect for in China.
Where's your iPhone made?
China gets a bad rap for the lowest, barely passable spec crap that gets made and sold by vendors seeking the lowest possible COGS. It's not that China can't make iPhones; it's that they get asked to make cheap shit in a lot of cases. And they can happily do that, too...
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#59A lot of people wonder why large companies can't just stay in the US and compete on quality, and here is a great case for why. It doesn't matter how great your workers are, you can't sell a product for $3,000 when others are selling it for $600. Especially when it's a technology still in development. And I know we pay extra for the warm and fuzzies knowing that something is made in the states, but I'm sure the home t…
I often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.
Honestly I dont see why and how Americans can do lot of those jobs. (de facto) Minimum wage in USA is around $10. You can hire an Indian or Chinese for an entire day for that amount and he will thank you.
The fact is that average productivity of an average American is so high today that it does not make sense anymore for most Americans to do a lot of those jobs.
This makes life difficult for some people at the bottom who have no skill and I think as a society we need to solve that problem. But I see government regulation and unreasonably high taxation as primary barriers to do anything.
Re: MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ooh, yeah, hadn't thought of Detroit - I'm from Indiana myself and the GP mentioned Indy, and away I went. Point being you could find much better locations than Brooklyn without going straight to China (while keeping your own self in Coolsville).
The challenge is still that you can build ANYTHING in China and if you can get the same quality and lower prices significantly, why would you choose a middle of the road solution in the US? I think the cost differential still overrides any sort of boost you might have from having a Made in the USA stamp on the machine.
Well, why aren't they moving their corporate offices to India or Thailand instead of Brooklyn? I mean, cost is the only metric, right?