Greetings to all: My, it seems that many folks out there are involved in adversarial customer/supplier relationships! We need to look at our business relationships as partnerships where we are in win/win situations. I can tell you that HADCO electrically tests 100% of the boards we produce before they go to our customers. We are also a "profit" organization that is in business to make an honest day's pay. Although we are deeply entrenched in all of the quality programs that should yield a perfectly functional product (i.e., TQM, ISO-9002, SPC, CQIT, etc.), electrical test has been and probably always will be a safety net which is used to ensure that our customers get a board that is functionally sound. Our customers will be charged for this test either as an "NRE" or amortized in the unit price of the circuit board. It takes time and money to generate the electrical test fixture, and more time and money to move the boards into electrical test, as well as for dwell time on the e.t. equipment which, yes, is very sophisticated and expensive nowadays. Before we entertain doing business with someone, this is discussed upfront. Our customers and my company need to know just what is to be expected. We have and always will stand behind our product 100% of the time. This means that we will take full responsibility for the bare board (is it a PCB or PWB?) that we produce. There are gray areas out there, intermittent opens, for example, that sometimes escape electrical test callout. We will still stand behind our product (the bare board) if we have caused the defect. Any required warranty above and beyond the cost of the bare circuit board would have to be discussed and agreed upon upfront. If the risk outweighs the benefits of doing business, we would have to walk away from doing that kind of work, plain and simple. If you are dealing with a quality board shop, catastrophic situations will not develop. If receiving and populating boards that turn out to be defective is a way of life for your company, it's time to look for another board fabricator. Regards, Tom Coyle Field Services Engineer HADCO Corporation *************************************************************************** * TechNet mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * *************************************************************************** * To unsubscribe from this list at any time, send a message to: * * [log in to unmask] with <subject: unsubscribe> and no text. * ***************************************************************************