34 industries, 62,000 stalls, 320,000 commodities for sale, 4 million square meters of selling space: welcome to the world-famous Yiwu Wholesale Market in the Zhejiang Province of China, "where Santa Claus comes to shop." [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri on Oct 16, 2009 - 8 comments

The Amish Hackers - How the Amish modify modern technology to meet their needs, and the motivation behind those needs.
posted by SpecialK on Feb 11, 2009 - 72 comments

Koyaanisqatsi [more inside]
posted by phrontist on May 10, 2008 - 72 comments

Chinese manufacturers are setting up shop in the U.S. due to a weak dollar, energy shortages, tax credits, and a desire to compete globally.
posted by gman on May 7, 2008 - 38 comments

Cope pipe without a jig. Enter a few parameters and get a pdf that will give you a printable pattern that will allow you to notch tubing for welding or brazing to another pipe.
posted by Mitheral on Mar 15, 2008 - 35 comments

A history of crayons. A Crayola color chronology. More facts about crayons. How to remove a crayon stain. How crayons are made (video). The lost Crayola colors. "State colors" and their equivalents. Soy crayons. Art made of crayons.
posted by bijou on Aug 1, 2007 - 44 comments

Made in China. A look inside the world’s manufacturing center. Flash video slideshow of the port of Shenzhen (7:00 minutes with sound)
posted by srboisvert on Jul 23, 2007 - 26 comments

Ever wondered where your laptop's parts come from, what it's made of, or what toxins are in it?
posted by aerotive on Mar 19, 2007 - 19 comments

Ever wonder how camera lenses are made? *Almost* justifies the cost of some of these behemoths. via.
posted by notsnot on Feb 3, 2007 - 31 comments

Cool Stuff Being Made: Each week the National Association of Manufacturers posts a new, generally-lengthy video of something being made.
posted by Captaintripps on Jan 23, 2007 - 18 comments

A Fly Wearing Glasses
PopSci offers this cool gallery of high-magnification micro manufacturing coolness. Potentially NSFW if a mite at 50,000x could be construed as sexy.
posted by fenriq on May 25, 2006 - 17 comments

Step right up ladies 'n gents! See how to make just about verything from accordions to zirconium. They've got paint, unicyles, condoms and much much more! Diagrams included at no extra charge!
posted by Irontom on Feb 8, 2006 - 17 comments

Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?

[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)

To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi on Jul 3, 2005 - 87 comments

Want it? Make it! 3D printers aren't that new -- already there are robots that print houses, inkjet printers that print human tissue, and for you CSI fans, machines that can reconstruct bullets, among other things. What's new, you ask? Machines that can produce anything and self-replicate, too. All under a GNU General Public License.
posted by greatgefilte on Mar 18, 2005 - 25 comments

The Evolution of Manufacturing is a collection of New York Times articles, providing a historical perspective on manufacturing operations in the U.S. The collection consists of 12 articles published between 1909 and 2000. It includes an article by Henry Ford himself, and an article by Thomas Edison based on his interview of Henry Ford. Interestingly, the collection is an advertisement for Peoplesoft.
posted by tuxster on Dec 21, 2004 - 6 comments

End of an era IBM may sell its PC division to Lenovo, a Chinese company, due to its decade-long dwindling importance in comparison to powerhouses HP and Dell - in a market they helped invent in the first place. Seems like a good enough reason to reminisce about the old bastard.
posted by fungible on Dec 3, 2004 - 21 comments

In China's newly wealthy cities, a research boom is starting. In parts of the countryside, the rivers are black and too toxic to touch.
posted by Tlogmer on Sep 14, 2004 - 14 comments

McManufacturing Jobs
posted by y2karl on Feb 20, 2004 - 12 comments

Have you ever wondered how pencils are made ?
posted by limitedpie on Oct 23, 2003 - 23 comments

How everyday things are made. See how things such as candy, cars, airplanes, etc are made. Learn about manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding. Stanford University's Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing's site covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video. Optimized for DSL/Cable speeds or greater. Macromedia FlashPlayer plugin (6.029 or greater) required.
posted by riffola on Aug 30, 2003 - 4 comments

It's illegal to answer questions about where something is produced... if it's produced in Israel. Or so a Missouri company has just discovered. They've been fined for answering the question, "Are any of these products made in Israel, or made of Israeli materials?"
posted by dejah420 on Aug 12, 2003 - 32 comments

Hey you, XYZ! Look at your zipper -- was it made by Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, or YKK? Probably. With seven million zippers produced every day at YKK America's National Manufacturing Center in Macon, Georgia, alone, it's no wonder that the zipper on whatever you're wearing right now is a YKK...or is it?
[a bit more inside]
posted by DakotaPaul on Feb 7, 2003 - 28 comments

Boycott GAP. Several groups see sweatshops as dangerous and inhumane. Yet there remains rejuvenation through globalization.
posted by the fire you left me on Nov 29, 2002 - 28 comments

Another of our industries,one that actually produces something, has started what appears to be a death spiral. This industry survey was used as supporting evidence as they presented their case to the ITC in May, ahead of a report to be submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee this fall. Some of the business owners comments are here. Who benefits? Near as I can tell, This Guy. (Best if read aloud)
posted by mss on Aug 5, 2002 - 4 comments

Hit back at China Move number one: order black berets for the entire army and toss the one they had. Move two: have the new ones made in China. Move three: We are pissed at China so we now destroy all the berets. Is this a government or what?
posted by Postroad on May 2, 2001 - 17 comments

Very soon,Etch-A-Sketch will just be made in China and not in the States.
posted by gluechunk on Dec 13, 2000 - 3 comments