Assembly

I had 175 panels (350 depaneled PCBs) etched and assembled by PCBWay and they did an excellent job! I have now tested all 350 PCBs and the yield was very high. This was specified to be a lead-free assembly and indeed it tested lead-free. I only saw 2 solder bridges (on the main IC) and 2 cases of an incomplete weld on the switch. About 5% of the jacks had an internal mechanical failure but this is not do to an assembly problem. Many of the smd jack contacts required manual resoldering for a robust connection. We are switching to a higher-quality gold-plated jack for the next production run so hopefully it will bond better to the PCB. I recommend sending PCBWay a picture of an assembled prototype to avoid misunderstandings (for example to emphasize that the speaker pads required solder paste to facilitate post-production speaker assembly). For this assembly I shipped all of the parts to PCBWay and unfortunately one part was short by 12 units (my error). PCBWay handled this well: they assembled all of the boards but clearly marked the boards the missing part. Depaneling by hand was very easy. Thanks for the professional, reliable, and prompt service!