Pyra news partially stale from the dragon's mouth


Wally

Wally

I am a banana!
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Hello All,

EvilDragon is still alive, so don't worry he's just been busy due to after-christmas online shop hell (orders, taxes, etc) :)

A few items:

1. Case Production: Ready and will start when he finds time to go to Greece to make sure everything is fine.
2. PCB Pre-production: Ready and will start next week at Global Components. PCB Production can start anytime (depending on GC's schedule) :)
3. Magnets are ready and are.. magnetic? :D
4. aTc working on moving to a more recent kernel for PyraOS which should fix more bugs. :D

Things left to do:
  1. Design and order the 0.3mm silicon mats that go between the battery compartment and CPU board. We have a company for that in Germany, just need to finish the design. :)
  2. Deisgn and produce packaging and manual.
  3. Order heatsinks and heatpipes. They're off the shelf parts, so placing an order is all that's needed.

Hopefully this keeps your cockles warm.
 
I am feeling more confused after this update.
Cases were supposed to be produced by now, so what is ready and what will start ?
What is PCB preproduction ? population of PCB boards ?
 
docbroke said:
I am feeling more confused after this update.
Cases were supposed to be produced by now, so what is ready and what will start ?
Click to expand...

No, we ORDERED the production in December, that means we need to wait for the material to arrive and during holidays, all companies were closed.
Everything is ready now, so I can go over to oversee the run.
Producing the cases itself only takes a couple of days. After that, they need to be shipped (probably takes about 2 weeks) and then it's time to apply the coating.

What is PCB preproduction ? population of PCB boards ?
Click to expand...

;) I briefly mentioned that in IRC to Wally, but he didn't post that it seems :)

Before doing a mass-production run for the first time, you usually do a pre-production run of about 10 - 20 boards.
These will be inspected and tested to make sure you don't have a high failure rate. For example, if one part sits properly on 50% of the boards, then the machine data for the placement of that parts needs to be adjusted.
You always do this with such complex projects with very small parts whenever something changes. And the production is not 100% identical to the prototype production run.

And as you can imagine: If a parts sits improperly on 50% of the PCBs, it's a lot more rework if you produce 500 PCBs at once than if you produce only 20 and fix the issue before producing the rest :)

So all parts are there and the pre-production run is simply to confirm the setup itself.
 
Are the new magnets known to be strong enough to trigger the lid switch? I do not remember whether that has been mentioned, yet.

Also, I wonder whether the coronavirus in China could mess up the supply chain in any way? Are the heat-sinks and heat-pipes from China?

Thanks for keeping us updated! Personally, the closer things seem to get, the more impatient I become. :)
 
Haraldur said:
Are the new magnets known to be strong enough to trigger the lid switch? I do not remember whether that has been mentioned, yet.
Click to expand...

Oh, these are not new. I had two different samples, one of them was strong enough, the other one wasn't.
I just ordered the ones that were strong enough.

Also, I wonder whether the coronavirus in China could mess up the supply chain in any way? Are the heat-sinks and heat-pipes from China?
Click to expand...

I don't think so. Additionally, right now there's chinese new year, so nothing will ship from there anyways.
The heat-pipes are coming from Mouser and they've got enough in stock, only the heatsinks are from China.
 
Wally said:
I was starved also.
Click to expand...
561605f484d7439285069dca98b0aab2.jpeg
 
Hi, I have been following the progress of the Pyra console for many years and hopefully will buy one in the future.

I am a Surface Mount Engineer (SMT) with over 30 years experience and I have never heard of a pre-production run ever. The usual process is to build a 'sticky board' on double sided tape, all parts are then verified and placement checked. A first off is then built and reflowed and then inspected, if all is good the product goes into full production. It is very rare that placement is off as CAD data or Gerber data is used. If placement was off by 50% I would be very concerned. I also don't think that the Pyra PCB is complex compared to alot of products that I have worked on and should be an easy build for any CEM.
 
The Pandora had a pre-production run as well. And with all PCBs I've ever produced (with different companies), machine data has always been derived from the P&P files we delivered together with the gerber files.
With the iCP2, the P&P files were wrong and LEDs were rotated by 180° (it wasn't clear from the datasheet), so without a pre-production run, we would've never noticed that.
(Well, the iCP2 sadly never had a production run, but that was for a different reason).

With every PCB revision, something can go wrong, so a pre-production run is a safety measure that can save a LOT money.

Well, the Pyra is more complex than a normal smartphone these days, as we cramped the parts on the relatively small PCB (a lot more components than a smartphone has).
We had to change the PCB design based on the first prototype production runs as some parts were too close together for a 100% working production.
With these parts, placement CAN matter and make a difference.

GC had a failure rate of less than 1% with the Pandora, which is pretty good.
The previous manufacturer (CC) had a WAY higher failure rate.
 
Thanks so much, ED! You are doing a rock star level job buddy!

I feel the holiday delays. I am trying to get a sign installed at my company and getting electrical contractors to come out and give estimates, get the sign manufacturer in production and all the little things over the holidays is a living nightmare. I have decided that in the future no work will be done during December and into the third week of January. Such is life.
 
Hi EvilDragon,

Machine data is usually derived from CAD data, P&P and Gerber data or digitised Gerber data. Any rotation issues would be picked up on the 'sticky board' and then corrected, the company building your boards should pick these up at an early stage and should not reach the production. I appreciate the Pyra is may be more complicated than a mobile phone etc but there are far more complicated PCB's. From what I've seen of the Pyra PCB's there is nothing overly complex.

Are you saying that the data you provided to the CEM was wrong due to your misunderstanding of a data sheet? If this is the case then again a good CEM would pick this up.
 
Zaxzan said:
Machine data is usually derived from CAD data, P&P and Gerber data or digitised Gerber data.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's what we deliver to them.

Any rotation issues would be picked up on the 'sticky board' and then corrected, the company building your boards should pick these up at an early stage and should not reach the production.
Click to expand...

Well, ONLY in case it's not wrong in your original design files :) Otherwise, both the machine and the AOI would see it as correct.

Are you saying that the data you provided to the CEM was wrong due to your misunderstanding of a data sheet? If this is the case then again a good CEM would pick this up.
Click to expand...

Well, the datasheet wasn't really well written. It was a cheap chinese RGB LED and it was not clear which pin the marking meant. So it was a 50/50 guess :D
 
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