Koyaanisqatsi
posted on May 10, 2008 - View this thread

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 on May 7, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Mar 15, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jul 23, 2007 - View this thread

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

Ever wonder how camera lenses are made? *Almost* justifies the cost of some of these behemoths. via.
posted on Feb 3, 2007 - View this thread

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

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 on May 25, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Feb 8, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jul 3, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Mar 18, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Dec 21, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Dec 3, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Sep 14, 2004 - View this thread

McManufacturing Jobs
posted on Feb 20, 2004 - View this thread

Have you ever wondered how pencils are made ?
posted on Oct 23, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Aug 30, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Aug 12, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Feb 7, 2003 - View this thread

Boycott GAP. Several groups see sweatshops as dangerous and inhumane. Yet there remains rejuvenation through globalization.
posted on Nov 29, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Aug 5, 2002 - View this thread

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 on May 2, 2001 - View this thread

Very soon,Etch-A-Sketch will just be made in China and not in the States.
posted on Dec 13, 2000 - View this thread