[probably_wrong]

More like the new "America can't manufacture a grill scrubber" [1].

For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

[Aurornis]

You have to separate the YouTube clickbait from the real learning content in there.

US manufacturing is expensive because wages are high, but also because we focus on the high end work that pays more . Even the small machine shops I used 10 years ago for small scale production runs are no longer interested in doing any small batch work. They have more contract work from big companies than they can handle, and the big companies pay more and have higher order quantities.

If you’re a shop or a factory in the US you’re never going to take some small orders for a grill brush from some YouTuber who doesn’t have any expertise in marketing grill brushes. Everyone is going to turn that order down because there’s no money or future in it, but there’s plenty of better work that pays better from companies who want to keep using your services in the future.

[bsder]

> Everyone is going to turn that order down because there’s no money or future in it, but there’s plenty of better work that pays better from companies who want to keep using your services in the future.

Until there isn't, and you go bankrupt because you didn't generate new independent business.

Maximally efficient is minimally robust. Or, perhaps you prefer: efficiency is the reciprocal of resilience.

And, by the way, China somehow manages to support these small manufacturers. For example: Chitu Systems supplies the small volumes of LCD screens for 3d resin printers.

[brynnbee]

The claim he failed seems like hyperbole. He couldn't find an existing manufacturer for chainmail in the US but this is a fairly trivial and niche thing to create, and is more a reflection of how uncommon it is for people to need that specific type and size of chain mail than it is that the US is incapable of making it. The other part is from Costa Rica only bc he hasn't yet made the injection mold for it, like he did for the handle itself.

[probably_wrong]

I disagree with that conclusion: even if the chainmail were indeed very uncommon (no idea), getting it from China was so easy that he even got it when actively trying to avoid it. And since the chainmail is the revolutionary part of the idea (and the most expensive part) it might as well be the product.

He set out to get "100% made in the USA", settled for "no part made in China", and couldn't even get that. That definitely feels like a failure of the US manufacturing industry.

[Aurornis]

> That definitely feels like a failure of the US manufacturing industry.

The US manufacturing industry moved on to better paying, more stable contracts because they could.

They have no incentive to do niche things for small time YouTubers who won’t be generating repeat business.

Even the small machine shops I know now have more high paying work than they can handle. They’re just interested in doing some niche temporary work in a race to the bottom with another country that can pay workers a fraction as much and ignore all of the health and safety regulations.

[brynnbee]

An industrial jumpring making machine is currently on ebay for $2500. I don't think a problem that can be solved so cheaply can be classified as a failure of an industry.