(chuckle) Gotta love those board brokers...

We had a customer of ours move a certain product to an oversee's broker a
few years ago. I learned about this after the fact when their Quality
Manager called me with problems.

Seems the boards they got would not power up as they should, they were
missing traces and in a small quantity, a core was not there at all.
Externally there were cut traces, damaged traces, and a whole slew of issues
adverse to quality and function.

He contacted me to see if there was any way we could repair the boards
(after assembly) so he could meet deadlines. Well there was really no way we
could. 

I did get from him they contacted the "supplier" who's only response was
"did they have a test stamp on them" of which they did, then he said "then
they passed test and any issues they are having were caused during
assembly."

He learned a valuable lesson about not researching suppliers, and especially
purchasing them from the "discount on-line shops".

We were really unable to help him with the majority of the boards, we did
however replace most of them upon receiving their purchase order.

They have been a valuable customer ever since.

Franklin

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pete Houwen
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 2:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] looking for ENiG photos

We put a lot of money and effort into material and finish selections in the 
RoHS chageover.

We have strict specifications on our fabrication drawings.

We have previously fully qualified 3 high volume and 2 prototype PCBs, and 
maintain them in a world wide AVL.

but purchasing sees pennies.............

This is just a proposed vendor - only sample quantites assembled, we haven't

ordered anything yet (I hope).

So far the proposed vendor has:
claimed to be a fabricator, but is actually a broker
fabricated at two shops, neither was included in the site visits or D&Bs
switched the laminate we approved (twice)
changed layer spacing
used some alien plating material
performed microsectioning and solder testing on a non-RoHS PCB, but shipped 
a completely different (hopefully RoHS) panel
The other (passed) microsection showed innerlayer separation.
Shipped PCBs with soldermask on pads.

Best scenario is that this finally wakes purchasing up to what I've been
telling 
them about buying boards in China.  Worst case is - they buy these anyway.

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