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2010-10-14 22:34:16 (4462 views) Our main contact, the only serious Chinese vendor we've found so far, man of infinite patience who really enabled us to get to this point, is now comprehensively reevaluating our project and giving us a new (of course higher) price.
He's spent hundreds of hours over a year's period trying motor overmolding, creating sample parts, refining molds, ordering custom screws, brass inserts and more. We still have an agreement that we'll pay him when money starts coming in. But he's just figured out that we're having 7 custom plastic parts, 8 custom rubber parts, rubber and plastic overmolding, custom brass inserts (2 rounds), custom screws (2 rounds), a diamond polished mold, plus there are a bunch of molds for the rubber which were tried and discarded when we were fine tuning waterproofing and the motor - not to talk about favors from other vendors who are his friends, such as testing out the glow in the dark pigments. So he's basically taking a loss with the project ... and he'll need to review his quote...
The most important thing for us is to keep his friendship because he really helped us a lot and followed through until we were satisfied... and it's hard to find someone like him in China where all the vendors screw up all the time and drop our business very quickly when we complain. He deserves not to take a loss with our business, we don't think he's going to go for the jugular but we're looking at a painful price increase since he's the one making most of the parts... we're keeping our fingers crossed.
This is the last mile of this marathon. The PCBs are being produced in panelized version ready for automated assembly. Components are being ordered. Batteries are getting created to go through LVD testing, and within a week of testing we can get a report, slap a CE mark on the product and sell the DL2000 in the EU as well (maybe, there are still a few minor legal loopholes but we'll work them out by that time).
We'll send a final CAD drawing for the foam cutting next week, and after 7 days they'll have foam samples and then we'll go for the box.
As far as living in China is concerned, YUCK! This simply cannot continue. Yucky details follow. Keep reading at your own risk...
We're extremely sleep deprived from constant and ubiquitous construction noise. We sleep and walk outside with earplugs in our ears. Foul odors and trash are everywhere, many times you've got to run to get past certain critical points on the street where trash is dumped and allowed to rot for days and the stench is just beyond anything you've experienced in the so called first world. We're right in the center of a major city, mind you, not some outer suburb or the countryside.
This is specific to our area: people spit on the street all the time, making really loud throat noises. They even spit inside the subway station, on escalators inside the supermarket, and other places you mistakenly think they won't dare do it.
Consequently most pedestrian streets are covered with saliva. Infants are allowed and aided in urinating just about anywhere including clean bus terminals right by people who are waiting in line. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the gap in culture and living conditions.
So as you can guess we are 100% focused on getting the product completed and... leaving! With fingers crossed, hoping the whole system won't break down as soon as we get on the plane.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let us show you the cleanest "Luxury Bus" 1st class seats we were able to find on our latest trip to the EMC lab! (It's not a joke, they are actual 1st class seats as stated on the ticket)
Also note, this was the cleanest seat on that bus (the bus itself being a bit below average as a whole).
This is what we're going through to bring you this product! Can you believe we've been here a whole year? And can you believe the immaculate mirror finish diamond polished parts in the previous post were created here?
By the way, is it interesting for people to see this sort of stuff or is it just yucky? We have a lot more shots we dare not post, after all we don't want it to look like we're bashing China in particular - the third world is the third world, huge clean shopping centers on one side of the street and abject poverty and people living amidst trash on the other... but China packs an extra punch because of the culture and industrial cities have the pollution...
As for the future... we either make enough money to move manufacturing to Korea, or find someone reliable to take care of things here (unlikely), or die trying.
We're ready to pay 10 times the money (if we had it), and we probably will need to and should, in order to get things done right the first time, and worry about the technology, new products and marketing, instead of being in emergency mode every few days and all hands on deck trying to patch things up.
But still coming to China was the only way we could have gotten through a year of manufacturing trials, and so we can't really complain. It was an adventure! Really awesome adventure. Coming home to ever more complete and good looking versions of our product is what keeps us here. Concept to CAD model to parts in our hands... the only difference with magic is in the ejection pin marks :)
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Your accounts also solidify what many people I know in my hobby already understand. While there are lots of good products coming from China, not evey factory is creating products of a desirable quality. Some of the work is high quality if you look long and hard, but a lot of it is total crap.
just to be clear, i'm not trying to paint with too broad a brush here and make sweeping generalizations. I think your experiences that you have shared have done a great job of fairly illustrating both the good and the bad that China has to offer.
More where that came from... lots more ;)