I received a new Raspberry Pi 3 A+ board from Newark/Element14 on Monday.
It arrived in a padded envelope instead of a box and the thin RPi box inside had been squashed. This prompted me to do a quick inspection of the board and I was quite appalled by what I saw.
The first picture shows rework that was done on the board. Very poorly done. Solder reflow on the pads is bad and the solder flux and solder debris have not been cleaned off.
The second picture is of the GPIO connector. The solder fillets are rough and you can see small balls of solder on the solder mask between pins.
I can't believe that this board would have passed final inspection. The silk screen says Made in the UK. I'm not sure where it was assembled.
Needless to say, I did not attempt to use this board. I got an RMA to return it.
In an earlier discussion with ianbinnie, he indicated that he saw issues with his new RPi 3 A+ also. Hope this is not an indication that there is a problem in the manufacturing line. I have another board coming from Adafruit later this week. I'll keep my fingers crossed.....
