Blog 8: Made in _______
Going subsonic: Why drones have their distinctive hum and how propeller design can help fix it.
Blog 8: Made in _____
I have made good progress experimenting and brainstorming this week, but my data will now be going into my final report, meaning I’ll be staying away from that topic, at least for this week. Instead, I will be focusing on a topic that is personally close to me and materially important to my project.
For an introduction, consider the materials I’ve used for my project: two batteries from different brands, motors, a drone frame, simple circuit boards (PCBs used for the speed controllers and flight controller), a thrust pull tester, 3D printer filament, and 3D printers themselves. If you’ve been counting, that is every piece of hardware that I’ve used in the last eight weeks. What’s the common thread between all of them? They were all made exclusively in China. In this blog post, I will be analyzing China’s manufacturing lead in the context of my project’s components.
Overall, China is the largest manufacturer in the world, making up 31.6 percent of global manufacturing (Safeguard Global). That’s an average, not including the specific fields where leads by a half or more (See if you can count how many statistics I list above 50 percent). They also produce by far the most drones globally; 90 percent of drones used by hobbyists and law enforcement in America were produced in China. The World’s largest drone manufacturer, DJI, or 深圳市大疆创新科技有限公司 in Chinese, is headquartered in Shenzhen and produces all of its drones there.
China also leads the markets for every component of drones, and each component of those, so on down the supply chain. They hold a majority share of production of each piece of hardware that I mentioned earlier, and are nationally often one of, if not the only, mainstream producers of technology. The wide variety of parts would be too complex to detail in one blog, so the following overly-long bullets will focus on batteries and motors, two products that best explain my point. I will also detail the market for 3D printers, as it was the most striking to me personally. The bullets focus on market share only for now.
- Battery technology is one of China’s biggest advantaged industries, as they are used for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and consumer needs like mine. China produces 85 percent of each component of batteries—cell, cathode and anode, electrolyte, and separator, while the US produces less than 5 percent of each.
- Brushless motors, the most “mechanical” component, are made of copper (85 percent share) for the wires, aluminum (60 percent share) for the rotor, steel (52.9 percent share) for the core, and ferrous magnets (87 percent share) to make them spin. China excels in manufacturing of each of these metals, making up more than half of the refined production of every one of them. As a result, China is easily able to manufacture a majority of Asian motors.
- 3D Printers are almost entirely made in China and with Chinese parts. More than 70 percent of printers are made and assembled in China, and the remaining 30 percent use almost entirely Chinese parts, even if they are built in the US or Europe. Two major counterexamples are Prusa and Lulzbot, though Prusa actually heavily uses Chinese parts1 and Lulzbot printers are too costly2 for a true comparison.
The most important of these components is the 3D printer. Though I did all of the 3D designing myself using American software (Fusion 360), everything else involved in producing my propellers has been possible only with Chinese products. My Creality brand printer, despite its Westernized name, is made in China by a Chinese company. The printer used by Pilot Institute, made by Bambu Lab, is likewise built and designed by a Chinese company. The Slicer tool I used for printing was also created by Bambu Lab. The PLA filament used for printing, too, is a Chinese product. Were it not for my creative input on this project, everything I’ve done would have been fully Made in China.
When reading these statistics, it is important to keep in mind how massive these production gaps are. It’s obvious to say, but more than 50 percent of production means that a country produces more than every other country on Earth. China produces more of every product I’ve listed so far than the US, Mexico, Canada, the EU, Japan, India, South Korea, the UK, Africa, South America, Australia, and the Middle East. Having a majority also necessarily means that there’s less of a share for each remaining country. For Steel, a product of US pride with roots in the Gilded Age, we only produced 79 million tons in 2024, eight percent of China’s production. Second place in steel production, India, only produced 150 million tons, 15 percent of China.
All of this hopefully demonstrates China’s massive lead producing almost everything, but especially in high-tech manufacturing, including drones, EVs, and 3D printers in particular. This has wide implications for China’s relationship with the rest of the world. First, of course, any conflict between the West and China, especially in trade, has the potential to cut off a half or more of material supply, creating shortages and driving up prices. We saw this during the pandemic, when shipping was disrupted and suddenly many products became more expensive. If intentional trade barriers are raised, that will be acutely painful for global consumers.
Germane to my project: all of my materials for this project come from China, but I have been lucky to avoid recent tariff news because of the de minimis provision in the US, which allows individual shipments from Temu and others to enter tariff-free. Otherwise, everything I’ve bought could have been priced 20 to 50 (flat tariffs) or more percent higher.
- Prusa prints its own plastic frame pieces, but uses Chinese bearings, rods, fans, steppers, and power supplies
- Lulzbot charges $2,000 for a mini printer and upwards of $10,000 standard sizes, while my Creality Printer cost me around $200 and Bambu Lab printer cost around $800.
Some Sources:
Auvsi (US Manufacturing Interest Group): https://www.auvsi.org/drone-competitiveness-at-a-glance.
Safeguard Global. “Top 10 manufacturing countries in the world in 2024.” Safeguard Global, 28, August 2024, https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-manufacturing-countries-in-the-world/.
CGTI. Technology Economy: China’s 3D printers getting popular among US consumers” CGTI, 13 Mar. 2024, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-03-13/VHJhbnNjcmlwdDc3NzIz/index.html#:~:text=Data%20shows%20that%20Made%2Din,media%20circles%20among%20the%20best.
Note: There were many sources for each manufactured good. Each is from a data aggregator or US / International government report. You can check my statistics on Google, and you will find corroborating sources within a couple links.
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