Farnell at the factory?

Hello all,

yesterday, I received this (from farnell.com):

Breakthroughs. Exhilarating, but rarely without hiccups.

A few days ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a small manufacturing delay. A component in the Pi is being reinstalled. In the grand scheme it's small potatoes - but we know it's frustrating for Farnell element14 fans and customers.

Farnell element14 will deliver your Pi to you around early June.

What does it mean? Any design problems again??? Or just a marketing excuse? I ordered PI on March 3rd....

Regards,

Pavol

Where have you been for the last couple of weeks? There was an issue with the network ports and the whole shipment had to go back to China to be replaced. This has been widely reported.

Trying not to poke the bear here.

Rework is always by hand.

Through hole parts might be waved soldered, but in this case I suspect they are likely to be hand soldered.

Through hole parts are soldered on last, especially if they are connectors or stand proud of the board.

Following on from my post in the "What is going on with my order" thread, there may be more than one production line at the factory, but they probably have other products already scheduled for a production run, which means they may not be able to dedicate all their lines to just one product.

Normally where a factory electrically tests a product it is the factory employed testers who test to the customer requirements soemtimes with specialist jigs, I doubt though in this case there would be any industry style 'testing jigs'. I could be wrong, but I suspect it would be a powers up, all OK test, even if they go further, most industrial customers will test a sample in their own workshop and retest with a sample from the shipment once in the warehouse. When a customer (RS/E-14) are onsite or have in the case of China an agent to look after their interests, the role is more one of auditing - do the parts correspond to the BOM, are they from the approved suppliers, is the manufacturing process being carried out as per the work instructions. It would take a major major *** up for the customers engineers or electronics techs to be sent to sort out problems.

As to how long it takes to rework a unit, that depends if the rework actually causes another fault, lifting of solder pads is one that springs to mind. I would think the reworked items would be sent out in one batch or two batches, probably one.

@bob huges

I noticed that issue a month ago, but the mail I've received 4 days ago. I supposed, that the issue mentioned a time ago has been already resolved. More, I didn't see any note of that sort @raspberrypi.org. That's why I was wondering about...

Pavol