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Originally Posted by fox46
Andymark, VEX and nearly all other suppliers although they may say their product is made in the USA, the bearings, fasteners, gears, shafts-- component parts etc nearly always come from offshore. It is the only way for them to offer products that we can or are willing to pay for.
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I'm sure Andy can chime in here, but I believe he has specifically said that all his fabricated parts are done in the greater Indiana area. That includes gear hobbing, machining, extrusion, etc.
They might be done from Chinese material, but I think you'd be surprised how much metal that is sold in the US is actually from here.
Additionally most things from McMaster are US manufactured (lots of bearings are probably a notable exception).
Quote:
Originally Posted by DampRobot
Welcome to 2014, where parts from China are both cheaper and better made.
From talking to various suppliers, it seems like the US is a really poor choice for FRC manufacturing (unless you need super fast turnarounds, and maybe not even then). Chinese manufactures are much cheaper, produce a better product, and seem to want your business a whole lot more than US based manufacturers. Basically, in America, you pay out the nose for each setup, and in China, you're essentially only paying for material, because labor costs are so low. There's a reason a lot of high tech manufacturing still has a significant foothold in the US (such as aerospace and medical manufacturing, where profits are large because of proprietary designs), while large scale, lower profit margin manufacturing (iPhones, etc) is better done in China.
There also seems to be agreement in the business community that this disparity in manufacturing is because of the large number of taxes and regulations in the US. I'll leave whether or not this is a good thing to the amateur politicians here.
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There is some amount of work coming back to the US because the gap in wages is starting to close a little bit, combined with the fact that lead times can be longer, customs are an issue, product can be lost to damage during shipping (salt water, etc), it can be difficult to communicate with vendors and make changes, etc.
It's kind of disingenuous to say that China makes better stuff than America. China is obviously good at certain things and not so good at others. I fail to see any instance in which China could produce something that could not be made to the same or better quality standards as in the US. You will pay more for it, but the US (on the whole) is better at quality control and process development.
I try to purchase North American manufactured products whenever possible, assuming they are of equal or better quality and cost competitive.
Excluding products like VEXPro which are of very high quality, the average Chinese product used in FRC (bearings, cutting tools, hand tools, machinery, etc) are somewhere between mediocre and garbage.