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Partial panel assembly

I just heard from the board fabricators and they botched up my order. Because it was only a bit more to get 6 panels made compared to just one panel, I ordered 132 boards with the prototype order. Now they are telling me that they had a problem with yield and they only got about 16 of 22 good boards per panel on the average over 7 panels. I can live with the total number (maybe not a rich full life), but I don't know what impact this will have on the assembly house.

When they program a pick and place machine, do they typically set it up in a way that will let them uniquely not populate individual boards on a panel? Has anyone done this before?

I would ask the assembly house, but they are closed for the day.

Opps, I just got an email from the fabricator and they are shipping the partial order and they say they will work out the issues if the assembly house doesn't like them. I'm not crazy with the idea that they seem to be forcing the shipment down my throat. But I'm not going to holler until I'm hurt. If the assembly house is happy with the partial panels I'm not hurt.

Rick

Reply to
rickman
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I've had a chance to think about this a bit and I am concerned with where this is headed. I am also concerned about the idea that all the boards might be marginal in some respect. I have gotten boards before with drills close to the edge of via pads. It was not bad enough to cause a problem, but if it had been a bit worse, or if it was worse on the layers I can't see, there could be reliability problems.

I would be happy to accept one partial panel as a compromise and even pay them a bit more for the luxury of potentially making mods before they supply the rest of the boards. But they seem like they want me to take the whole thing *now* or wait a *week* to receive what I ordered. Of course I have a schedule and a week is a significant impact.

What really sucks is that I have been pushing very hard to maintain the schedule and even paid extra on shipping for parts and such to make this happen.

I will have to call them tomorrow to find out what they expect to happen. I bet it is not the same as what I expect to happen.

Reply to
rickman

We call them X-outs. Just take a big Magic Marker and mark a big X across the whole surface of the bad boards.

Um, not cool. It's your assembly house, not theirs.

Be careful with where this is all going. I'd be worried that there's something potentially wrong with *all* the boards and you're going to end up eating lots of parts and labor in addition to the bad boards.

If they try to bully you, decline the whole order and tell them to do the whole thing over until they get it right.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Some years ago I had a problem with high fallout rates like that.. they led to significant (i.e. non-zero) field failures (IIRC, some problem with PTH cracking at the edges- a process control issue at the PCB fab house). Be careful. You might want to understand more about what caused that failure rate. If it was something clearly limited to certain boards (a damaged phototool or something of that ilk) then fine, but if it's not, then I'd watch out.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

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