221–230 of 308 posts
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not just an ocean, the various governments and visas make it hard to move people you need
Not just people, parts too. Importing parts from the USA to the UK often takes longer and has more paperwork than from China.
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Yep. Anything I get from China, even from a vendor I have done lots of business with in the past gets at minimum random samples inspected and tested when appropriate. Every single shipment, zero exceptions before use. So many things are caught. At best there is a lack of QA on the Chinese side, but it's definitely worse than that. They have no qualms sending you known-bad items, and just see it as "maybe the customer…
I have family in the auto industry, and they have similar stories. They'll get a shipment and it'll be out of spec. So they contact the vendor and the vendor will just say, "No, they're fine. Parts are good." No, they're out of spec and you need to fix them. Look, I can show you. "No, parts are good." And you'll go around and around like that. They won't care and won't budge. Until you say, "Well, since these are out…
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>"Americans will happily cheat you as well." I did not have too much experience with US manufacturers. I however can talk about Canada and Brasil. My experience with Brasil was stellar. Canada - you better fucking watch. As for China - I did order directly high power DC/DC converters. Those were available in the US and China. China came 10 times cheaper ($25 vs $250 apiece). The devices where we have installed those…
Chinese manufacturing 10+ years ago is completely different to Chinese manufacturing in 2025. the other comment about "zero trust" is significantly more apt
I remember these exact same “Chinese quality” threads 10 years ago and they read pretty much the same as this one, complete with the “well 10 years ago I got great stuff” and “yeah 10 years ago was different”.
Cycles, man. Cycles.
In the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of noise [1] about how the regulations [2] about carrying power banks on planes in China got a lot stricter and any powerbank without a C3 mark is prohibited on-board, regardless of size, also any device with the C3 mark that's subject to a recall.
Given the timing of these two events, I suspect that there's some relationship.
[1] https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/flying-with-...
[2] https://english.beijing.gov.cn/latest/news/202506/t20250628_...
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I have family in the auto industry, and they have similar stories. They'll get a shipment and it'll be out of spec. So they contact the vendor and the vendor will just say, "No, they're fine. Parts are good." No, they're out of spec and you need to fix them. Look, I can show you. "No, parts are good." And you'll go around and around like that. They won't care and won't budge. Until you say, "Well, since these are out…
Was this last paragraph necessary?
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Yes, Lumafield does some of my favorite marketing ever. It adds more (absolute) value to the world than they receive back from it. Their monthly CT scans are some of my favorite small joys: https://www.scanofthemonth.com/ I mean, there's probably very good ROI on this marketing; I'm not saying they're foolish or selfless. Just that it doesn't cost them that much to do, so it's a win-win for everyone.
But will it blend? actually no let's not blend the lithium, forbidden inhaled powder
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I wish more devices took field-replaceable cylindrical Li-ion cells. They're pretty common in flashlights and rare in other products where they would be advantageous.
There's a flurry of battery holders that accept 21700 cells, but the power delivery is just too weak IMHO. From memory, the max output was about 20~30W for the bigger models [0]. For 2 cell types it gives 10W, so barely good enough to slowly charge a smartphone. https://www.amazon.co.jp/PLCPDM/dp/B0DFPKXQZ1
Most of them use rails though, so different cell chemistries are a bit of a risk over time.
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I work in manufacturing in the US. Incoming quality control, for Chinese vendors, is necessarily set up with zero-trust. This isn't a "trust but verify" sort of thing, it's strictly "do not trust". Assume that, at every step of the chain, there will be a lie: change of process, material change, collected data, and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and resellin…
Yep. Anything I get from China, even from a vendor I have done lots of business with in the past gets at minimum random samples inspected and tested when appropriate. Every single shipment, zero exceptions before use. So many things are caught. At best there is a lack of QA on the Chinese side, but it's definitely worse than that. They have no qualms sending you known-bad items, and just see it as "maybe the customer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have family in the auto industry, and they have similar stories. They'll get a shipment and it'll be out of spec. So they contact the vendor and the vendor will just say, "No, they're fine. Parts are good." No, they're out of spec and you need to fix them. Look, I can show you. "No, parts are good." And you'll go around and around like that. They won't care and won't budge. Until you say, "Well, since these are out…
Was this last paragraph necessary?