Short, practical notes on the parts of China sourcing that actually sink budgets — process choice, alloys, tariffs, compliance, factory selection and drawing prep. Written by an engineer who sits between you and the shop floor, not a content farm.
Two aluminum families, two raw materials — ingots for die casting, billets for extrusion — and two different forming routes. The differences in strength, weldability, anodizing and tolerance that decide which one your part should be.
Read the guide →The measure is real and it lands on your landed cost. How the duty works, why the classification of your own part is the question to resolve, and where the responsibility actually sits.
Read the guide →A cheap EXW quote means nothing once Section 232, freight and fees stack up. How to model true landed cost before you commit, where the tariff bites, and what legitimately affects the rate — and what doesn't.
Read the guide →What a real factory audit checks, the red flags that never show up in a sales brochure, and how a drawing review before quoting separates capable shops from talkers.
Read the guide →The five changes that take a drawing from "makeable eventually" to "right first time" — and why fixing them in the file costs cents instead of a tooling revision.
Read the guide →What each vetted shop actually runs, the tolerances they hold and what they're verified for — the backbone behind every part we source.
See capabilities →How to pick a shop that holds your tolerance and verifies it — supplier tiers, material certs and the landed-cost trap.
Read the guide →When casting beats machining, how tooling cost scales with volume, and keeping porosity out of the part.
Read the guide →Custom dies, 6063/6061 profiles, machining after extrusion, and how to match the profile to the job.
Read the guide →One coordinated flow from flat pattern to finished part — design rules and avoiding weld distortion.
Read the guide →Send a drawing and target market — I'll recommend the process and model the landed cost before you quote a customer.