John Larkin wrote:

Whole batch, maybe 5-20 bad vias per board. We canned that vendor.
Strange, because they had been OK for years. But we paid them for 100%
bare-board testing, and it was obvious that we didn't get it.


They likely had fired some, or all of the more experienced employees
to cut overhead.


Someone in engineering sent a small sample order to qualify a new PCB
vendor, and accidentally left out the film for a layer. Each layer was
properly numbered, so it should have been obvious that the film for one
of the center layers was missing. They went ahead and made the boards
without even making a phone call or sending an e-mail. That layer
carried the + & - 12 VDC supplies to 14 op amps, yet they claimed that
it passed the 100% inspection. Gee, they had one chance to impress us,
and did they. We found that the film was missing when they send the
packet back, and the missing layer was found weeks later in the
engineer's office where it had fallen off his cluttered desk, and behind
a pile of file folders.


They went right to the top of bad vendors. I was the one who found
that the layer was missing, after they stuffed a single board, and
almost every signal was O volts. The only part that worked was the
couple CMOS chips that controlled the AGC board.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida