A few weeks earlier I had visited a similar fair for textiles and related products with many suppliers from China. I was impressed that they had shiped entire fabrication machines to the exhibition site to show them in production. What awaits me this time?

Yes, just wanted to stop by shortly, but then Pickleball was canceled. And there was so much to investigate! It were actually 6 exhibitions in 3 halls:

One thing I was interested was coffee makers, and one machine served free coffee to the visitors – indicated by the long line there. But that’s just one example.

There are also solar panels, MPPT solar chargers, battery blocks (in 2025 the price/kWh has fallen by 40%), inverter (we needed one for Simon in the Phillipines, Malungon)

Some let you have a look inside to be sure of the quality. I made contact on WeChat and got a new supplier for our KH door from Taiwan with production side in northern China.

But there were even stranger supplies. Here a short list:

• AMD graphics card RX580 with 8GB RAM (released 2017 – 9 years ago!!)
• UHF 640-690 MHz dual wireless microphone from Sertong (Guangzhou Sertong Electronics Technology Co., Ltd., est. 2004)
• OEM producer for portable batteries as off-grid power or energy storage for solar, that also provides services to Xiaomi, Haier and BYD
• Robotphoenix with a 4D package robot on display. They also provide educational robots, and send me their catalog (No. 477 Hongxing Road, Xiaoshan Economic Development Zone, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China)
• Gas separation plant for N, O, Ar and liquid nitrogen

The last one was wild. I did not take a picture of their model from a gas separation plant to produce Nitrogon, Oxygen or Argon. I could even have taken it with me for educational purposes. Back in 2007 I needed liquid nitrogen to cool my Helium lamp to produce VUV (vacuum ultra violet) light, similar to EUV (extreme ultra violet) light used by ASML for lithography. But at the Humboldt university we bought the liquified gas instead of producing it ourselves. How much would it cost to produce it yourself?

Gas separation plant

The main obstacle is actually the energy cost. Main application in China is nitrogen gas. I think it is for food purposes because of its inert nature. Here are the prices:

• Nitrogen 0.2 kWh per cubic meter
• Oxygen 0,5 kWh per cubic meter
• Liquid nitrogen 1.0 kWh per cubic meter

If you don’t need it in liquid form, the gas is 5x cheaper. I forgot the price for Argon (0.9% of our athmosphere) that we used for TIG welding at SSIS. I still remember my early attempts on the 3mm aluminum cube. Good times! Now I’m even more motivated to visit China in summer.