On the recommendation of a mentor, a few of us took a quick trip to a prototyping company called A-Tech. The company’s focus was building prototypes of toys. With big names for clients such as Hasbro, Mattel, Tiger Electronics, Hallmark, and Mega Block, the company’s show room looked like a toy store from the United States.

During the tour, the representative said the only time we were allowed to take pictures was in the show room, and he was very careful about security. There were cameras everywhere, and it wasn’t hard to see why. He said that they often worked on toys up to a year before their release, so it was essential that nothing leak about the design of characters or any details that could compromise them. One leak and a movie studio or toy company could break their business.

The facility itself had a few departments. There was the CNC milling area, where sheets of thick ABS were transformed into models. There was a room full of technicians with scalpels and other tools tweaking the models or assembling them. There was a modeling room with people forming wax molds of designs. There was a room with silicone molds and vacuum formed parts. There was a painting room. And then we moved into another part where there was a room of modelers creating virtual models from sketches using extremely expensive force feedback wands that moved in any direction and allowed the modelers to ‘feel’ their model as they manipulated it. There was another room with people working on CAD models of parts and assemblies. There was a final room with 3D printers.

The tour was shorter than the travel time, but it was fascinating nonetheless. I don’t think there’s anything they can do for me. As a toy prototyping factory they are accustomed to making small models, and they only develop one or two prototypes of something and ship it off. After that, they are no longer involved, leaving the client to take the model to another factory and find someone to develop the tooling. They also were very expensive. Probably still far cheaper than an equivalent U.S. company, but still way out of my price range for my current project.

If, however, one was looking for a toy prototyping facility where one could hand them a sketch and they could transform it into a beautiful 3D model and make it real, then this place is PERFECT.

My Mandarin is awful. I just spent the whole subway ride, about thirty minutes, with my little book on Mandarin, trying to figure out what to say to order my buns this morning for breakfast. I hate that every day I point and I’m not showing people progress. Six freaking syllables. Two bean, one spiral. I was ready. I got up to the counter, said what I thought was right, and things fell apart immediately. I think the confusion was because I said two, then one. Perhaps I should have waited for her to do the two beans first, then ask for one spiral. Things got worse when they started asking me what I meant. Of course they had to ask the question in Mandarin, using lots of words and saying it quickly. Then the guy next to me got involved, trying to help by using even more words I didn’t know (and with a vocabulary of about ten words, this is not difficult). The girls behind the counter know me. I’ve been going there for weeks. One of them understands that I know nothing. They shoved a couple buns in a bag and sent me on my way. I never got the spiral one, which is plain but with a hint of some spice, and it turned out that one of the buns was something other than bean.

I’ve been here seven weeks and I still haven’t mastered a single word. I’m understanding a few words. Almost nothing. And with every attempt at speaking ending in complete failure, my will to keep trying is breaking down. I may just be an illiterate and mute resident. Perhaps I should make a card and hang it around my neck that says “I’m a stupid westerner. Don’t bother.”

Update:

In retrospect, I wonder if maybe they only had one bean and were trying to communicate that to me and ask me what I wanted instead. That explains what the people were trying to say. Maybe they were just telling me there was only one, not that they had misunderstood me. And that means the other girl must have said something like “just give him something else.” And the guy thought it was funny, and was probably trying to explain to me as well, but he was useless. Okay, maybe I’ll give it another shot tomorrow. But I need to do some serious learning. I’m constantly embarrassed by my lack of everything.

China has a problem with tax evasion. Stores often keep at least two sets of books (and sometimes three). There’s the actual books, and there’s the government books. When people go to a store and purchase something, the purchase may not end up on the government books, especially at restaurants where it is difficult if not impossible to keep accurate records of stock levels and verify that everything is accounted for. Further, almost all transactions are done with cash, so there is no record on the bank’s side, either.

All these ghost transactions aren’t taxed, and the government doesn’t like that. The only way to combat this is to make sure there are receipts and that the transactions end up on the government books. But the problem is so ingrained that people don’t care about the receipts.

So the government has a scheme called fapiao, which is a method whereby receipts are provided that have a scratch lottery built in. Scratch off your receipt and you can win money back. The one in the picture with 50 on it won 10 back. What happened was I went to a restaurant, spent 150 yuan, got the two fapiao as a receipt, scratched it and won 10 yuan back. I can redeem this receipt at the restaurant from which I purchased it.

Of course, this is China, and there are all kinds of schemes that have cropped up around this. First, you can request NOT to get a receipt in some places, and they will give you a small discount on your bill (because then they don’t have to report the transaction and avoid the VAT). The prizes on fapiao are so small and rare that you’re better off getting a regular discount without the fapiao than you are winning a prize with it. But not all places do this.

The other major scheme is people selling fapiao in major areas like outside the big subway stations. They walk around muttering it under their breath. Because these receipts are used on expense reports, people sell fapiao to business people at significantly lower rates, and then the business people claim them on their expense reports and get money from their business.

There are so many schemes and ways people scratch out a living and avoid taxes and game the system here. It’s expected and embraced and you have to always be careful that you’re on the victim end of someone’s con. Fortunately the Chinese are nonviolent and you don’t have to worry about losing more than a few bucks.

China's receipts are a lottery

If you are coming to China to manufacture, it’s is essential to have your ducks in a row and anticipate common problems. It’s probably not enough to have a handmade prototype. You need a completely designed PCB, a complete BOM, complete CAD drawings of all the parts and how they will be assembled. Knowledge of manufacturing processes and which will be most appropriate for your parts. You need to have the datasheets for all your components, know what materials you will be using, and how you will be assembling your parts into a finished product. You need people in your home country who you can contact with questions or to accomplish tasks for you or make revisions.

Even though you have all that lined up, you’ll still throw a huge chunk of it out the window when you arrive. When you realize that pricing schemes are completely different for components in the U.S. from China, what you thought was the cheapest part on Mouser or Digi-Key ends up being your most expensive component. Parts that aren’t even listed in the U.S. are now a cheap and frequently used component that simplifies your design. Your enclosure will turn out to have been designed wrong somehow. It’s almost impossible to get it completely right the first time. It will require slides* or manual processes that are inaccurate, or too much plastic or your mold will cool incorrectly in a particular part and lead to a weak part in that area.

Why so much knowledge beforehand? Because you have SO many learning curves it will be impossible if you haven’t gotten over some of them before coming, and you can’t just rely on the internet to teach you what you don’t know because it doesn’t work much of the time. You’re not just dealing with manufacturing when you come to China. You’re dealing with the hassles of living in China. And you’re not working 8 hour days. You still have a life in the U.S. that you need to maintain, which means working longer hours so that you can interact with people during the mornings and evenings when you both can be up. The daily commutes, the restaurant frustrations, doing laundry and paying rent. Everything you do is a learning experience, even if you’ve done it many times before in your home (See the post on the ordeal of getting sheets). All those learning experiences and frustrations add up. Having your life up in the air as well as work is extremely draining. Having to learn to use PCB layout software and solid modeling software at the same time is a hassle you don’t want to add.

If you’re throwing out so much, why bother preparing it in the first place? You can’t even start communicating with factories without a clear idea of what you want, and it is FAR easier to make changes to what you already have than to start from scratch using tools you don’t know. Think of it in terms of what work is necessary and what work needs to be done IN CHINA. Your time in China is limited and expensive and valuable. You need to do the things in China that you couldn’t have done at home, otherwise why did you bother coming? Revisions to something are easy. Designing a thing from scratch is way harder when you don’t have the contacts or the ability to communicate.

Also, when you arrive, you will find things to work so completely differently than you expect. You don’t always have to try to understand it. Choose your battles of learning. I don’t know how many times a day my experiences lead me to say “This is China” and move on. You can’t swim upstream all the time and some things just don’t matter.

* A slide is an extra part of an injection mold that is used to prevent part lock. Part lock is when you have designed your part so that it doesn’t slide straight out of the mold. For example, a hole in the side of the part means your part can’t just pop straight out because the part of the mold that makes the hole is holding the plastic in. So you have a slide, which is another part of the mold. The two halves of the mold come together, then the slide comes in, then the part is molded, then the slide comes out, then the halves separate. Slides add a lot to the cost and complexity of a mold.

This is a normal thing to see in the mornings. Little kids all line up before school in rows and columns and do exercises led by their teachers. They’re as coordinated as little kids can be, and the parents and grandparents are often standing around and watching. I snapped this pic quickly from a distance because as an alone 30 year old tall white male I stick out and don’t want to scare anybody or have them think I’m a creeper. I just thought it was a cute thing that happens every day. In this pic the kids aren’t in their uniforms. They usually are, and then the cuteness level increases significantly.

Kids in front of school doing morning exercises together.

This is a dried rose. It tastes like dried stawberries. It’s very sweet, and the petals are small and make it have a different texture from strawberry. Apparently all that is done is some sugar or honey is added for sweetness. I think it was my first time eating a rose and I have to admit they don’t just smell good.

Update

It turns out the translator was wrong and this is actually hibiscus, which makes more sense.

Sunday, April 8 was the Shenzhen Mini Maker Faire, put on by Seeedstudio. There was a good group of projects, though the robots category dominated the list, with little, and not so little, mechanical things running around the floor and even flying through the air. There were about 40 booths of people showing off their projects or their products.

I was showing off my scoreboard, which had the blinking lights factor and the Arduino insides with lots of wires, so there was some interest. I was joined by Saidy, a woman who had recently graduated from university studying English and who worked as a technical document translator. She had volunteered to be my translator during the event, and quickly picked up the things I was saying in English to people and was translating all of it into Chinese when Chinese speakers came by, so pretty quickly I didn’t even need to talk to the Chinese people at all and we had everybody who stopped by covered.

Interest in my product was mixed. Some people didn’t get it or didn’t want to understand that it wasn’t just a clock. Apparently sports aren’t huge in China, and people see big bright full color LED displays all the time around here, so what I was doing wasn’t particularly special, and it was hard to explain all the ways you could use it and hack it. However, we performed a small experiment to see if the insides would attract the hacker community. Below is the photo of the insides of the prototype unit, with all its wirey goodness. Needless to say, this got people to stop.

I was at my booth pretty much the whole time, so I didn’t really walk around much and talk to people at the other booths and get lots of photos of the event. I did wander around a little, and met some very interesting people, and even did a couple interviews, but didn’t manage to get any photos.

There were a couple sessions happening on another level teaching people to solder, and there was a section of the show with a variety of books, but the majority of the action was in the exhibit hall, where people were presenting their projects. In the afternoon some people gave presentations on the stage next to the exhibit hall, given in mostly English with a translator repeating each sentence.

In all it was a good event, and I’m glad I participated. I didn’t really gain anything related to my business, but it was nice to see that the hacker/maker community is thriving in Shenzhen and that people around the world are doing similar things and have similar mentalities.

Me and Saidy, my amazing volunteer translator.

So many wires! All hand done!

If you’ve ever seen the Korean movie “Castaway on the Moon”, you’ll remember that noodles and black bean sauce play an important role in the movie. It’s a really good movie, by the way. So when I saw it in a Korean restaurant I figured I had to see what the hype was about. Well, it was good, but not worth the effort that the main character put in. I think for him it was his favorite comfort food, though, so it makes some sense. It was still a pretty good dish and I finished it happily.

Star Prototype is a prototyping facility for doing short runs of products (in the tens) to develop the tool and verify the design and make iterations on the prototype before going to mass production. After working with Star, one is confident that the design and tools they have could be taken to a larger factory and used to produce thousands of units.

The factory is run by a successful Westerner Gordon Styles, who is adamant about quality control and using Western methods in his factory. Calling it a factory is a bit of a misnomer, though. It’s more like a spotless workshop, with knowledgeable employees at each station, responsible for their work and trained from the ground up. In many cases, Gordon specifically said he tried to hire new people who hadn’t been ruined by other factories and could be trained to do things correctly. He requires staff to only have limited overtime, and that is paid overtime, and they get longer breaks as well, and their dormitories are less packed. The staff are happier and better educated and more conscious of the client’s needs and quality control and safety. The equipment and work areas are well maintained, and there is special equipment to analyze materials to ensure that they are using the quality of product that they demand and aren’t being swindled by suppliers. They have facilities to develop and test all through the product development stage and can even crank out a few thousand parts if necessary. They have a list of manufacturers they recommend for higher volume work that also try to treat their employees ethically and with high standards.

Their Western style of engineering doesn’t come at Eastern prices, however. But the security and high quality during the product development is worth a lot when it comes to designing the tooling and materials that will be used for mass production, where the slightest flaw can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

We toured their main facility, which included rooms for polishing, painting, vacuum molding using silicone molds (expensive and only good for about 20 parts, but significantly cheaper than having a metal tool cut), lathes and CNCs, and a significant quality control facility. Then we took a short ride to a separate building which included the mills that are used to make the injection molding tools, and then the building next to it which used the tools inside the injection molds.

(Star Prototype)