categories: Bitcoin, Shenzhen Journey.
We were lucky enough to overlap our stay with the Shenzhen Maker Faire!
There were a lot of drones…
I even ran into some friends!
Lizhou Sha MIT ‘18
Deb Weinswig, my cousin!
We finished off the day at the Hackaday pizza party.
What struck me most is that we were like an hour out of the city by subway but it still looked like this:
The amount of construction in the region is insane.
Watering trucks! Saw this during a night out. They go around and spray down all the fancy greenery.
Inside the King Kredie Engineering Query room
On Day 9 I mentioned that we had submitted our boards for Engineering Queries, but I didn’t quite explain what those are.
When you’re working with a good manufacturer, they don’t just blindly produce what you tell them, they will go through and verify certain properties of the design to make sure it will come out as expected, or even tell you ways you can save costs that you may not have thought of. This is because:
3 can happen because a different process may have no different labor cost, but just a material cost which they don’t mark up. This is an important point to keep in mind when working with various manufacturers – they will pass savings on to you if possible!
While we were doing the Engineering Query at King Kredie, we also got a special bonus tour: Flex PCB Manufacturing.
Flex PCB is kind of the future – as devices get smaller, a thick-old-green PCB is no longer practical unless it is also a structural element. Flex PCB’s, traditionally used more often as a custom connector, can be populated with components as well so are a really cool technique to experiment with.
The process is pretty different from traditional PCB etching.
You start with a big roll of copper foil.
Punch out a pattern using a big press.
The die looks like this:
Then you laminate it. The laminate sheet has also been punch cut appropriately.
An iron is used to bond the plastic laminate to the copper/backing laminate.
Then you (optionally) silkscreen print on
Alignment is not critical here.
Finished product:
This flexpcb has a stiff copper trace inside of it as well for rigidity on that axis
Later on, these will need to be cut out/depanelized.
The printing press guys were really the best – so good, they get three posts for one day!
Following our visit, they taught us how to do – and appreciate – the traditional tea ceremony.
To make the tea ceremony, first you use hot water in a little basin to wash out all of the tea cups. Then, you fill the teapot with tealeaves, and use the basin (with fresh water) to pour hot water over the leaves. You stir by gently shaking the tea for 30 seconds, and then pour out the water. The first wash is thrown out traditionally to make sure the leaves are clean. Then, you repeat and let steep for a few minutes. You drink all the tea, and then repeat over multiple washes of the tea.
The tea they were using was incredibly good; probably the best I’ve ever had. When we asked where it came from, they told us their friend grew it!
The week we were set to leave Shenzhen, the guys from the printing press sent us a big box of the tea we made the ceremony with. I’ve shared my stash of the tea with friends and family, sharing my stories from Shenzhen, especially the generosity of everyone who made us so welcome there!
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