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ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

reuters.com

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Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#181

Post by sudosysgen »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #160
sudosysgen wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese have been seriously trying to catch up in turbofan engines only since 1986. They are now far enough ahead as to be very comparable to the Russians. They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in military technology. The Chinese, on the other hand, acrually ar…

No they have been seriously trying before then, it's just that they had failed and were somewhat covered by USSR. Even if we take that date, 40 years and countless actual engines to study and they're not even there yet! > They are nowhere even near to having spent as much as the Russians in resources. You forget that the economy of the USSR was a massive powerhouse, that allocated absolutely massive incestments in mi…

Nope, before the Sino-Soviet split and shortly thereafter there was zero serious effort to build jet engines. They were producing Soviet designs under license and working on that until the mid 80s.

China never, ever, ever had anywhere near the engineering resources of the Soviet Union. To suggest as much is insanity. They arrived to that level somewhere before 2010.

China already has competitive engines. They can and do simply buy Russian engines. Domestic engine development is a nice-to-have, and not a huge priority. This is obviously reflected in the low budgets and the low number of employees in these programs. This is public information.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#182

Post by thaumasiotes »

tyingq wrote: post #59
Spooky23 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a facility with experimental lithography machines. One of the nasties looked like water, but would pass through your skin and melt your bones. Fun.

Hydrofluoric acid, though I don't think it melts your bones in a dramatic/fast way. It seems to be partially so dangerous because it doesn't "burn" right away, and as you say, is absorbed quickly in skin. So you might not rinse it off quickly. "Piranha solution" (sulfuric acid, water, and hydrogen peroxide) is closer to what tv/movies portray hydrofluoric acid being like. That is, being able to disappear a body in it…

> It seems to be partially so dangerous because it doesn't "burn" right away, and as you say, is absorbed quickly in skin. So you might not rinse it off quickly.

It seems to be dangerous in a lot of different horrible ways. It's always fun reading an MSDS for substances like this: https://www.airgas.com/msds/001077.pdf

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#183

Post by McBeige »

CookiesNCream23 wrote: post #180

I work in the industry and have worked in a fab. Here is some insight. We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems. Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different. The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce…

Sounds fascinating! What kinds of simulations?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#184

Post by sudosysgen »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #156
sudosysgen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, Chinese innovation and efficiency in manufacturing alone rivals most other kinds in the world - it's truly a marvel for a country to be able to pay it's factory worker a higher wage than the average wage of several EU countries while actually doing the manufacturing at an integer fraction of the cost. That takes a massive amount of innovation that no country in the world is able to match. The value of t…

Sure. I didn't say China has done nothing impressive (although it's emissions intensity of manufacturing and other environmental and labor rights records are horrible, which takes a some of the shine off its manufacturing for me, but that blame is equally on western governments and corporations who conspired to circumvent the environmental and labor standards demanded by their populations by farming them out to total…

I'm sorry, I can't take you seriously. Nowhere in the world can match the efficiency of Chinese manufacturing. They can do more with less in a way no other country in the world can, which is the simple truth. Even countries with worse labour standards, even countries with worse environmental regulations (and there are dozens and dozens).

This is simply a product of developing and inventing new ideas and technology, and using them to produce trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth. If it was simply about poor labor rights and environmental regulations they wouldn't be where there are today, as there is a large number of countries with much more permissive environments.

Twenty years ago people said that it was all just because their wages are low. Now their wages are higher than several EU countries and almost all of South America, and they still are doing more with less. There is no other explanation, this is simply because they have expertise, ideas, and innovations that others countries don't or can't put into practice. The bite is absolutely matching the bark.

If there really isn't much innovation and expertise there, everyone else would be doing it. The prize here is in the trillions of dollars.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#185

Post by sitkack »

sudosysgen wrote: post #148
snicker7 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things moved fast in China (rather Shrnzhen) due to a period of ultra-liberal economics that Xi is now dismantling.

Xi has been cracking down a lot on "soft tech". Hardware tech has never been anywhere close to liberal even in Shenzhen, where all levels of government always had massive levels of investment and involvement in the industry.

Could you define soft tech in this context?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#186

Post by traceroute66 »

CookiesNCream23 wrote: post #180

I work in the industry and have worked in a fab. Here is some insight. We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems. Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different. The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce…

> Downstream effects of this fire will reduce the uptime of the machines and the delivery of promised machines to our customers.

Given that it is the factory acquired from Berlin Glas in 2020, surely its capacity would only "just" be coming online at ASML and they have pre-existing capacity elsewhere ?

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#187

Post by ravis11 »

leokennis wrote: post #166
IAmEveryone wrote: post #8

Google Streetview of the location: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4504667,13.4327515,3a,75y,22... It's as close as one can get, with about 200m missing because, I guess, the driver decided nobody would care about the rest of this godforsaken industrial area. Or they got a call at exactly that moment that Google would stop gathering photos to spite the criticism of data protection advocates that was annoying them at…

I though Street View was banned in Germany?

It isn't but people can register their properties if they want them to be blurred out.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#188

Post by inglor_cz »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #92
dragonwriter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we could do what China does, why do we go to China every time we need something done? Ricardian comparative advantage, which doesn't require the party you go to to be better at the thing you are going to them to do than you are, only that you are enough better at something else that doing the thing you are outsourcing would require giving up more of the other thing. It's about opportunity cost, not absolute prof…

While I've taken an intro to economics class, I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America. There are few metrics where they are somehow behind us in proficiency.

The bullet train story isn't all light and luster and progress, even though the system is really good for photo-ops and interesting for railway fans (which I do not deny to be one).

The West tends to take interests of people whose real property (including homes) blocks the right of way into account. While it does encourage NIMBYs from blocking everything, I find it better than the "here be the state railway, now pack your things and begone" approach.

Also, dissenters and politically unreliable people are forbidden from using such trains in China [0].

[0] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-ch...

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#190

Post by CookiesNCream23 »

McBeige wrote: post #183
CookiesNCream23 wrote: post #180

I work in the industry and have worked in a fab. Here is some insight. We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems. Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different. The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce…

Sounds fascinating! What kinds of simulations?

I am not an expert in this area. Most of it is physics simulations.

An example I know of is that we use feed forward control to make sure layers are aligned and printed with nanometer precision. Simulations are needed in this instance to model effects like thermal expansion, pressure waves, and much more.

There is also more work in metrology (measurement) with stuff like scanning electron microscopes, lasers, flow, etc.

You can find more about this by looking at the companies ASML has acquired or ASML's job postings.

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