Fresh news from the board production (2010-10-20)

[EvilDragon]

Well, it's more than time for an update on the board production site.


Michael had a conference call today with the company, and here is what they told us:


Over 2000 boards are finished with SMT populating.


The last 1000 boards are half finished (SMT populating only on one side yet).


Over 1000 boards have already been tested (well, except for the nubs).


While not all 3000 are finished yet, if what they tell is true, they should be finished when the nubs arrive.


We're currently also working together with another company that is VERY interested in the whole Pandora project.


If sales go higher we might need more than one company to actually produce the boards, as the capacity of the current one would be full.


Also, the given deadline have not been held yet (they wanted all boards finished except for the nubs on Monday). We need reliable deadlines if we want to give reliable lead times in the future. It just adds to our costs if parts, etc. are there and paid but the production did not finish in time.


But first, everything needs to be setup and test runs have to be made before we can say we will switch. This happens parallel to the production by the old company.


Here are some pictures for you, straight from the production site:

 

[levi]

Edit: I must be tired, that's 200 boards in the first photo, not 2000.


Thanks for the news! I can turn in for the night now - goodnight!

 

[emcee]

That's not really bad news. Not great, but I was expecting a lot worse.

 

[sebt3]

That's a bit late for your birthday. But I think you don't care much

 

[EvilDragon]

That's a bit late for your birthday. But I think you don't care much

Well, I don't trust these guys, so unless I see a picture of those 2000 boards, I'm sceptical (and we'll keep working on setting up the new production site).

 

[emcee]

Don't you sleep?

 

[EvilDragon]

Don't you sleep?

slee... what's that?

 

[DaMummy]

sleep is for nintedo/sony/apple, we got quality product to be made here

 

[Link]

Good news. Nice pics.


How long for them to populate the boards with nubs once they arrive?


Will they have the rest of the boards finished by the time the nubs arrive?


Since they haven't been paid, I'm sure they have to be itching to complete this part of the order being 3/4 of the way complete. I see this as a good sign that we are on the companies radar for a change. In all reality, 4000 completed boards would have taken up a good bit of space waiting for nubs. Seems like a much better outlook than Two Months™ for the end of batch 1 and the start of 2.


Peace & Pandora,


Link

 

[rum runner]

I don't know as long as all the rest of the boards are indeed done but the time nubs get there and week and half or so I would have to say this is good news. I would rather them keep busy that get them all done than set them off to the side for a week out of site and out of mind. Specially for a week and half waiting on nubs and then have some dumby back in to them with a fork lift or something. At least if there still working on them there paying attention to the lot of them. Just my two bits so I am content with this news.

 

[ashcloud]

Sleep is where you can play with your pandora without actually having one

 

[doublebeta]

Oh, good, once all of batch1 goes out there should be more confidence in potential batch2ers, so we can soon reach 4000 batch2ers...and start batch2!


And good to hear that there's a company that is (apparently) actually interested in their customer's project.


...I wonder what those red boards that are in the background of that pic are...always want to know what I never will .

 

[Xenu]

Thanks for the update. All hail our evil reptilian overlord!

 

[doublebeta]

Thanks for the update. All hail our evil reptilian overlord!

What if he's amphibian?

 

[Yannick]

Nice pics, especially the last one.


Put these on the facebook page please. I need to spam some people

 

[Bosbeetle]

what are those red boards underneath?

 

[Yannick]

prolly some product that has more or less the same chips as the pandora, so they don't have to reconfigure the machine from scratch between runs.


Or they ran out of green board and used some red?

 

[Bosbeetle]

prolly some product that has more or less the same chips as the pandora, so they don't have to reconfigure the machine from scratch between runs.


Or they ran out of green board and used some red?

Looks like it just has a red rim around it. Could it be those are also pandora boards? (that need some processing or something)

 

[EvilDragon]

And good to hear that there's a company that is (apparently) actually interested in their customer's project.

Yes. We still aren't sure we will switch, as switching always is a lot of work and adds costs.


If the current company really has the boards reliable produced as they told us in the conference call and everything works out nicely, there's no need to switch.


But in case it doesn't work out, we don't have much of a choice if we want to have a reliable production. Finding other companies takes some time, so the more early we look, the better.


And who knows - if the Pandora sells well, we might even need more than one company to produce to keep up with production in the future.

 

[marktuson]

Yes. We still aren't sure we will switch, as switching always is a lot of work and adds costs.


If the current company really has the boards reliable produced as they told us in the conference call and everything works out nicely, there's no need to switch.


But in case it doesn't work out, we don't have much of a choice if we want to have a reliable production. Finding other companies takes some time, so the more early we look, the better.


And who knows - if the Pandora sells well, we might even need more than one company to produce to keep up with production in the future.

And of course, more people buying the machines might make more money available to invest in extending the Pandora's design; maybe more memory, more NAND, better processor, right? Maybe even lower unit costs, eventually?