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Growing in In Duluth, Minnesota, in the 1990s, Lloyd Armbrust always thought he would work in a factory. His father ran a lime processing plant in the city until manufacturing was predominant — until it was not. Factories in the Midwest withered when companies began to find cheaper labor and supplies abroad. Armbrust found work in publishing and advertising technology. On holidays and family reunions, a sympathetic but skeptical father listened to the warning that the U.S. would be highly reckless for allowing China to become a world factory.
These warnings resonated in Armbrust’s head in April 2020 when a 7-foot-tall machine was examining a machine carrying twin sharp steel shears. In an impulsive pandemic project, the software entrepreneur spent millions raising a mask factory in Pflugerville, Texas to meet Covid-driven demand and to show that light manufacturing was still possible in the U.S. But the project was getting off the rails.
The machine in front of him, shipped from China, had to cut and attach the surgical loop to the ear loops. He only processed about 100 masks when a fingertip-sized sensor monitored his supply chain before it failed. It was a common and inexpensive ingredient in Taiwan, China, and Japan. In the US, it couldn’t be achieved. Armbrust was now held hostage by a $ 7 sensor, heading thousands of miles.
Production was not restarted for a week, while the company waited for sensors to arrive from abroad. “That opened my eyes. I thought, ‘Wow, the US is really behind it,'” he says. Dad was right with China, he realized: “They have a huge infrastructure advantage.”
Armbrust is a history of American success. The company can produce a million masks a day and has supplied Texas public schools and the state of Illinois. It is part of a small industrial revitalization in response to the pandemic, as U.S. manufacturers were created or pivoted to meet new demand. Ford staff take out the shields on his face. He began making test rack racks in Baltimore’s Marlin Steel Wire. Now, however, as economic normalcy and cheap imports return, Armbrust and others fear the gains and studies they have made over the past year.
Although others were obsessed with sugar last spring, Armbrust came under the influence of the vicious cycle of the U.S. industry for decades: as imports of masks like masks pushed America to close factories, so did incentives to produce materials and machinery at home. Also, factories were much more difficult to exploit or open.
The Snafu sensor was a far cry from the only problem Armbrust encountered at its U.S. manufacturing entrance. The company had to ship most of its machinery from Asia and hire a translator to decode less than the entire documentation, usually written in Chinese. Some of the machines, which usually go to factories much closer, were damaged as they passed.
Materials and manufacturing specialization were also difficult. The fabric that makes up the filter layer inside a mask, called meltblown, is mostly produced in Asia. An Armbrust employee obtained the initial supply in a Detroit parking lot with a socially secluded deal. But the pandemic pushed prices into the stratosphere, and the company soon decided to melt itself. Naturally, the necessary machine had to be shipped from China. Armbrust paid consultants to fly from Germany to inspect the machine before making the long trip to Pflugerville.
When the 35-meter-high machine arrived, an engineer was concerned that there was no platform to access a high-altitude section of the ground that required regular maintenance. The supplier recommended that the machine collect the chicken wire and raise the staff properly — Armbrust was afraid that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would see something wrong. “We couldn’t do that, if people fall they can die,” Armbrust says. “They said, ‘Oh, they don’t usually die.'”
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