From thedonald.win, a list of websites giving MADE IN AMERICA products (China is Asshoe)

thedonald.win ^ | April 25 2020 | poster "blubberdong"

[Steven Tyler]

Corona has lasted longer than any other thing I got from China

[laplata]

:)

[ronniesgal]

thank you!!!

[rlmorel]

Heh, I am one of those people in the course of my life who can be found wandering around the plumbing sections and nut/bolt bins of hardware stores, looking for a gasket, a bolt, a piece of pipe or other plumbing hardware that can be cut in some way to suit some purpose. Almost never successfully, but I keep trying to manufacture some knick knack or doodad to hold something in place, replace some cheap thing that broke, you get the idea.

When I decided that I wanted to try 3D printing, because nearly all the guys I work with got this cheap Chinese printer and were printing...knick knacks, doodads...wire guides, you name it, I bought one too. But I had a raft of problems with mine.

As to how long...well, I purchased it back in August 2019, and I spent way more time trying to use it and make it work than I thought I would. I just couldn't give up.

Did you ever see this now famous scene from the movie "Office Space: Printer Execution"?

Well...that is what I wanted to do with the printer. It was cheap enough, only $175, and I reached the point that said "That's it." I need to buy a real printer, one that wasn't a hobbyist printer that I had to build...one that was more dependable and could print bigger things.

Then, the day after I made my choice that, yes...it would be something I would use and it wouldn't gather cobwebs...damned if that little printer started working right. Well, my mind was made up, so I went ahead and got the new one anyway. I offered to gift my old one to my brother, but he saw that toil and went through and was frightened off by it. I have a guy at work that wants it...:)

I learned a lot about 3D printing from it (It is a Creality Ender-3). I had to buy a new display board. A new motherboard. I had to replace all the hardware on the bed because it couldn't keep a level bed. I had to break off, right out of the box new, a piece of a component because it wouldn't allow me to level it, and the folks on the internet said that was what I had to do, and it worked.

Here is a picture of my starter printer, and anyone familiar with these would recognize all the customized parts and add-ons I made for it (wire guides, filament spool holder on the left, etc.

My whole life, I have had anger issues and patience issues especially doing fine technical tasks. As a kid, I couldn't let the paint dry on models before continuing work on them, and would mess them up. I learned patience, but my wife would contest my claim that I mastered my anger issues! But if I hadn't, how could have gone hour after hour, day after day trying patiently to get it to work?

[rlmorel]

Honestly, you nearly can...!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Excellent thread! Great resource! This household is all about buying local and buying Made in the USA whenever possible - and it usually is.

So, now that the ‘Wisconsin Cheerleader’ has shown up, here are things you can buy that are made in Wisconsin. Do you NEED them? Probably not. Will you WANT them? Yep!

https://www.usalovelist.com/10-products-we-love-made-in-wisconsin/

Cheese
Brats
Ice Cream
Outdoor Gear
Woodworking
Art
Pottery
Cookies
Kringle

At a MINIMUM a FReeper should have a Racine Kringle before they die. I’m pretty sure if you take a piece with you, St. Peter will let you in The Pearly Gates, no questions asked. ;)

https://www.kringle.com/store

Everyone should pimp their own State here, too, don’t ya think? Please do!

And I can’t forget Duluth Trading Company out of tiny Belleville, WI:

https://www.duluthtrading.com/

And Lands’ End, out of Dodgeville, WI:

https://www.landsend.com/

(A little pricey, but shop their clearances posted on-line on Wed. and Sat.)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thanks for the PING!

[rlmorel]

I also had to replace the print head twice.

I purchased two Raspberry Pi cigarette package sized computers, and set one of them up to run the printer and give me a webcam view, and the other I set up as a personal VPN for my home network so I could securely remote in and look at the printer printing (to see if I needed to shut it off)

I had never done anything like either of those things, but got them both to work, so...It was valuable to me.

[tbw2]

Along these lines, if you are Catholic, you could buy items from Monastery Greetings. Not only are the soup mixes, jellies, coffee and candles made in America, but what you buy subsidizes Catholic religious orders.

[lysie]

Thank you for the ping.

[lysie]

Thanks.

[lysie]

Like

[neverevergiveup]

Very cool!! I admire your creativity and perseverance.

The anger issue is something many of us deal with in life. I was constantly criticized and often humiliated for small things growing up, and it led to lots of self-criticism and hearing those ‘voices’ of criticism in my head every time I made a mistake - even as an adult. I’m over that, mostly, but it was an inner voice I had to learn to ignore.

[John4.11]

bkmk #made in USA list

Thanks, grey.

[glock rocks]

De Walt rules. My shop is black and yellow. I have thousands invested in De Walt. U.S.A.

[GOPJ]

Slap tariffs on junk coming out of China and the problem will solve itself...

[timestax]

bttt

[rlmorel]

I sometimes think it is a matter of being able to forgive yourself when you fail to meet your own expectations.

I had a lot of that-nothing ever came easy to me (mentally speaking) and I always felt I had to work twice as hard to be as good as someone who may not even have been all that great at whatever it was.

Professionally, this has been helpful to me. I had a former Vice President at the place I work come to a relative’s funeral (he left us and went to work at my brother in law’s place...actually took his job when he retired...small world) and I was surprised to see him there.

I always had the highest degree of respect for him for a variety of reasons, so it was a nice surprise to see him.

In front of a whole group of people talking at the funeral, with everyone listening, he said: “I always hesitated to ask you do do something in a short time frame, because I knew you would go to nearly any length to get it done and would just about kill yourself to do it. You are one of the hardest working people I have ever met.”

I have to tell you...coming from that man, that was high praise indeed, and it was very hard not to let that go right to my head...okay, well it did, I guess.

The point is, I feel like I have strengths and weaknesses, I don’t always see things right away, and I have to have things repeated in different ways until I grasp them fully sometimes, and then I have to make a bunch of mistakes, but the one God-given thing I have that has helped me get past that is downright stubbornness and a work ethic I got from my Dad.

So, as I worked on this printer as a hobby, month after month, I lost my temper a bunch of times. But many more times, I also was able to put it down, walk away without letting it control me, and come back to fight it another day.

I regard that as a victory. And from reading your post, I think you would too in that situation!

[rlmorel]

I must say-I love my DeWalt tools.

I had crap tools most of my life, I just could ‘t afford to buy them, so I had a lot of run down hand me down tools.

When we finally got enough money, I asked my wife if I could spend “X” amount of dollars to buy new tools, a chest, etc.

And that wonderful woman let me have an open checkbook to get what I thought I needed.

I got all DeWalt tools, a bunch of batteries, and I have to tell you, doing things is so different now. She let me buy a big old vise which cost me about $400 IIRC and replaced a little dinky broken vise that had belonged to my father. How did I ever live without a good vise????

Now, I readily admit-I could have easily gotten some other brand of cordless power tools, and I’ll bet I would be just as enamored of them, but...these tools have worked flawlessly for me, I have dropped them off my roof onto asphalt, etc. and they work.

Love it. Sigh, all those years, using crappy tools...:(

[metmom]

What I have found both personally and from watching others, is that when you by cheap junk, you often end up spending more in the long run than if you had bought something nice in the first place.

That’s because the cheap junk breaks, and so you either have to buy another one and you have just spent twice as much for a cheap junk piece of something as in the first place, or you learn your lesson and spend more after all, instead of spending more initially and not having the aggravation of having to buy something twice.

I burned through through two cheap sewing machines in two years and decided that I could spend yet more money again on another piece of crap and still have nothing to show for it, or just splurge and buy something nice.

I went with a Pfaff, in the days when you could still find them, and that machine has paid for itself many times over and is about 40 years old and still going strong.