The Honorable Parts

Thank you for this. I had no idea there was such a thing as an "industrial photographer" let alone several.

I work in the manufacturing sector and there are times, despite the grime, frustrations with management/bureaucracy or general environmental concerns that I find what we do quite beautiful, in a way. When you see the choreographed dance of a production line, be it the size of a building or a small automation cell, it's really quite something that we were able to put that all in motion without catastrophic failure. The photo of the Global Foundry is really something, illustrating the intricate complexities I have encountered in so many factories that just look like monolithic beige boxes from the outside, housing virtual cities of activity within.

I saw the Maurice Broomfield exhibition and have the book of the same name (Industrial Sublime), which is still widely available and recommended for anyone interested in this area.

On the same visit to the V&A I also saw some of Bernd and Hilla Becher's work (water towers etc) which has since sent me on a journey of discovery of The Dusseldorf School of Photography. The style of some photographers from this genre (especially the Bechers, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer) may well appeal to anyone interested in industrial photography, while perhaps not strictly of the same genre. I am headed to a small Candida Höfer exhibition in London this weekend. Definitely have been enjoying this particular rabbit hole immensely!

It’s slightly funny that your last link is to the website of a museum at SFO airport. I like SFO a lot for having such installations and an overall calm vibe.

Great links, thank you for this.

I fell into industrial work right out of undergrad as a EE, not intending to work in the rust belt or manufacturing or anything of the like. I erroneously assumed it was not important, not sexy, not interesting. How wrong that was.

How things are made is so important, not only for our society but also as learning experiences for engineers, planners, logicticians, and more. As a career roboticist, the time I spent in the manufacturing industry seems invaluable to me now.

My first job was as technician, then, as an EE (well, I lie, my first job was as a dishwasher, at a nursing home, but that was when I was 16).

The nice thing about that job, was that I got to do both the hardware and the software. In my case, I designed the electronics, and things like the chassis, so I was working with the metalshop, and whatnot.

I linked to my first project, in a previous post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42637454

(note: i wrote the link in the OP)

as it happens, i spent about a decade working on an electronic product that, for complex reasons, wasn't suitable for outsourcing overseas. i wrote a reasonably long and detailed post about this process recently, which you can find here: https://scopeofwork.net/proof/ i also wrote about it a bunch on my personal blog; you can find the relevant posts here: https://pencerw.com/feed?tag=thepublicradio

Are you trying to have a product made? Or are you really just interested in the manufacturing process itself?

It depends on the product, obviously. For many things you have domestic manufacturing options, but people either overlook them or immediately seek out the cheapest alternative (often China). There are small contract manufacturers all over the United States.

Doing your own manufacturing of electronic goods is a common trap for people with just enough experience to know that it’s possible. Nearly everyone who has done it will recommend against it. You have to choose if you want to be in the business of making and selling a product, or in the business of setting up and operating a lot of difficult manufacturing machines and processes. People who try to do both at the same time usually get overwhelmed, delayed, and burned out.

There are a lot of categories of products where it still makes sense to do the manufacturing close to the customer. Take a look at the window industry for example.

There is still a lot of manufacturing in North America, both small and large. Zoom into the industrial area of any major center and start looking at names to get some ideas.

There are also some folks that are trying to break the mold entirely. Check out https://www.srtxlabs.com/

One option is contract manufacturing - which avoids the need for you to set up your own factory and hire your own employees.

At least in the electronics sector, there are contract manufacturers in the west that are happy to deal with small-to-medium-volume production runs.

Their websites will sometimes make them sound a bit aloof, making out they're big and high tech and expensive, but that's just marketing. If an electronics contract manufacturer says they work in aerospace, defence and security, medical, oil and gas and their website has photos of jet fighters and operating theatres? What they really mean is they're set up for production runs as small as a few hundred items, they're happy to deal with a bit of bureaucracy on your end, and they'll guarantee they won't cut corners (like substituting components with cheaper or more easily available ones) unless you tell them to.

A catch, of course, is the minimum orders involved. Automated assembly machines may have the same running costs regardless of the wages of the country they're in - but those machines need to be set up and reconfigured when changing between orders. I don't know what wizardry lets PCBWay offer surface mount PCB assembly for $30 for 20 boards, but you can't match it while paying western skilled worker wages. So if you ask a western contract manufacturer for <300 boards, the price will be substantially more expensive than Chinese manufacturing.

I rarely hear about stuff being done in the US, especially electronics.

But I did like reading they did it reading the book "Schiit Happened":

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514355027

Nearly without joking: Karl Marx..

As you seem to want to acquire or manage the means of production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production

Look for any and all of the sponsors/people who work with the Battlebots groups.

While some of them are big names (Solidworks) you will also find lots of little guys flagged in there who are doing the contract manufacturing.

But, it won't be $100 like China. Expect minimum NRE of about $5K to make it worthwhile to them.

And, please understand that, even so, you are still an unprofitable nuisance--so be SUPER polite when dealing with them. Also please understand that the manufacturer talking to you is at the top of a pyramid of problems being caused by your choices, part manufacturers, material suppliers, etc.--their bad day is generally due to everybody else (including you!) However, since you are dealing with real people face to face and being really nice, you will find that they often will go an extra mile for you that you would never get otherwise.

(One shop I worked with had yield problems on assembling a board. It turned out the big manufacturer created a really brain damaged part whose footprint just sucked terribly--it was so bad that they quickly EOLd the part and changed the footprint. We had ordered 100 boards expecting that we needed 50 with lots of lead. Of course, that wasn't happening. One worker there sat down, hand tinned an almost microscopic chip 100+ times and resoldered those chips repeatedly until we had fifty. Needless to say, I funnelled any and all business I could through them from that point forward.)

Any company willing to deal with you at low volumes should be treated like you have found gold nuggets--because you have.

The title on HN is the subtitle of the article. The main title is "The Honorable Parts".