Inside the Raspberry Pi Factory 120
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a photo walk through of how Raspberry Pi boards are made at a Sony factory in South Wales, UK. The factory says that the multiple automated and manual checks have meant that only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped with defects."
Better "inside" view (Score:5, Informative)
I think this: post from Pi [raspberrypi.org] is a better "walk-through", as it includes descriptions as well as pictures.
But, that's just me.
Now start making the Model B's there. (Score:5, Informative)
Because in my experience, the yield from the chinese Model B factory is 50%.
My first RPi is currently tied up in a work project, so I ordered another model B from Newark. It came in and I fired it up yesterday, no LEDs or any signs of life. Dead.
Then I noticed the main BGA in the center of the card looked a bit askew, looked closer and noticed the BCM2835 was missing. The Samsung DRAM that ordinary sits on top of the '2835 was soldered straight onto the PCB. I understand the part shooter fucking up once in a while and missing a chip, but the board shouldn't have made it out of the factory.
C'mon. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for something that's most likely going to work, than do what I'm doing now and spending even more bucks mailing the fucking thing back, and crossing my fingers that the replacement works too...