There is nothing inherently bad about a chinese equipment or good about an american equipment. What matters is which manufacturer put how much effort in quality control and sustainability. Depending upon consumers location supply chain instead can be a more impacting factor regarding the source of an equipment. The fact that iphone is made in china, and we buy pretty basic controllers for $$$ in usa shows there is extremes in both end. Other than these common elements, remember by large there are really few PCB manufacturers in USA compared to far greater consumer base. This coupled with the fact that China has state sponsored (or subsidized) electronics maufacturing sector makes the price more competitive for them.
There are companies in usa who have started doing PCB manufacturing in usa (adafruit.com is a hobbyist own, female owned PCB company , running from manhattan), I am optimistic about them, since they are more aligned to the supply chain impacts (we can get what we want faster while controlling the quality) instead of raw nationalistic emotions (economics work differently).
I see lot of bad reps around chinese equipments, and I think its not fair. Recently a blog from adafruit itself noted that chinese manufacturing sector can be hard to decipher for westerners (i.e. often time the resellers or intermediate manufacturer does a poor job in communicating the exatc requirements, which is very important for electronis [things like operating conditions]), that leads to bad quality... which consumers correlate with being chinese.. again correlated but not really the cause.
I do personally care that my supply chain is local as much as possible. Supporting local economy/lfs and a focus on sustainability is the key, china bashing, almost always will lead to misconceptions.
There are companies in usa who have started doing PCB manufacturing in usa (adafruit.com is a hobbyist own, female owned PCB company , running from manhattan), I am optimistic about them, since they are more aligned to the supply chain impacts (we can get what we want faster while controlling the quality) instead of raw nationalistic emotions (economics work differently).
I see lot of bad reps around chinese equipments, and I think its not fair. Recently a blog from adafruit itself noted that chinese manufacturing sector can be hard to decipher for westerners (i.e. often time the resellers or intermediate manufacturer does a poor job in communicating the exatc requirements, which is very important for electronis [things like operating conditions]), that leads to bad quality... which consumers correlate with being chinese.. again correlated but not really the cause.
I do personally care that my supply chain is local as much as possible. Supporting local economy/lfs and a focus on sustainability is the key, china bashing, almost always will lead to misconceptions.
