[Electronic Circuit] Found defective products after 100 boards were installed and filed a Quality Complaint with JLCPCB.

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This article can be read in about 12 minutes.

Introduction.

I am now developing ” Mia,” a talking cat-shaped robot.

In order to release 100 units on June 1, we ordered 100 boards from JLCPCB on April 27. After that, there was a power supply installation confirmation problem (see blog post below), but it was cleared and 100 boards arrived in mid-May.

Incidentally, other components (speakers, LCD displays, touch sensors, etc.) have also arrived and my room is currently in storage.

No way, LCD display cannot be installed!

This is an after-the-fact reflection, but I should have written the code and verified the installation as soon as I received the board, but I put it off and finally started assembling the board about 10 days after its arrival, and found a problem I did not expect.

In anticipation of the pin headers being mounted horizontally, they were designed to line up exactly without gaps when the LCD display, which corresponds to the eye area, is fitted.

However, in reality, some of the pin headers are slightly unlevel, resulting in problems with LCD displays interfering with each other and not fitting together.

In the above figure, the LCD display is slightly tilted from vertical to right when mounted against the tilted female pin header.

Because of this, the enclosure could not be screwed down to the end either. Incidentally, if it could be screwed down successfully, it would look like the following.

Email the JLCPCB

Email the JLCPCB immediately

Dear Customer support, Please contact us.

I have received the circuit board.
We are verifying the board and have discovered a serious problem.
The LCD display cannot be mounted as most boards have female pin headers that are not parallel and are distorted.
As a result, the enclosure cannot be screwed down.

Regards, Kazutaka
Kazutaka

Then I received the following reply within a day.

Dear customer, Please contact us.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.
Please express your request to our after-sales team in the quality complaint.

JLCPCB has a professional after-sale team to help to analyze the problem and provide suitable solutions for you! Please click the “Quality Complaint” button of the order in which you find problems in the order history. Our tech support team will respond within 24 hours on work days after you submit it. To follow up the reply of our after-sales specialist and progress of the issue, please click the “Quality Complaint” button again in the same place.

We apologize for the trouble caused by the quality of the product. We hope you find this information useful.

Best wishes!

They told me to contact the after-sales team through the “Quality Complaint” field in the Order History section. So, I will write a Quality Complaint.

Quality Complaint noted

When you open the Quality Complaint form, you will see the following

There is a field to enter the Quantity (number of defective items), so all 100 items must be verified by fitting the LCD display.

So, one by one, we fit the LCD displays and sorted the good and bad ones.

Verify each substrate in the cardboard shown below and separate the good ones into the plastic bag on the right side and the defective ones into the plastic bag on the left side.

The result was 74 good or acceptable (right side) and 26 defective (left side). It was quite hard work.

The following entry form and text were submitted with the following information

Thank you for creating the board. We have assembled the board and found a serious problem.

Some of the pin headers for attaching the LCD displays are distorted rather than horizontal, which means that the LCD displays cannot be mounted as shown in the diagram. They interfere with each other.

The outer enclosure surrounding the board has also been ordered from JLCPCB, but the enclosure cannot be screwed together due to the above.

We have verified all 100 of these boards we received and 26 of them are defective, which do not allow the LCD display to be mounted. and deliver them to us?

I’m nervous that they will respond to the repair and place the order for free (it’s in China…what do you think?). I’m not sure.

Also, I have not yet written the code on the board to check the operation, and I realized that it would be better to do this for all boards as soon as possible.

However, if writing cannot be done, or if it can be done but does not work properly, it means that something is wrong with the surface mounting, and in this case, identifying the cause is even more difficult than the assembly problem described earlier.

I had heard before from a senior member of a hardware startup that “hardware can often have problems during board and chassis mass production,” and to a certain extent, I have encountered them myself.

Countermeasures
When ordering, make a note (check to see if there is a space for comments when ordering) to emphasize the surface mounting that you want to emphasize in the placement compliance.
When the board arrives, we will verify the installation and programming of the board immediately.
When the board arrives at the customer’s place of business, the installation and programming should be verified immediately.

P.S. I received a reply later in the day, and..,

The following reply was received on the same day.

Hello sir or madam, I’m sorry.

Thanks for reaching out and sorry if any trouble caused.
We have reported it to the factory for some more check and would try to avoid it in future production. Could you kindly have some reworking on your side this time? We would like to apply some coupon as compensation.

Best regards,

We have informed the factory of your request, and we expect to make improvements on future orders. How about we issue you a discount coupon as compensation, although we will not offer free repair for the defective products we have already sent you? How about that?

Well, that’s what happens.

After a few more exchanges, we finally agreed to issue a $30 coupon as a compensation. We agreed to add a note on the order form for the next and subsequent orders.

Normally if the hole dimension is OK, the alignment would be OK.

If you place a new order, would you please kindly help to add a remark so we can inform the factory to have a double check before delivery? If you place a new order, would you please kindly help to add a remark so we can inform the factory to have a double check before delivery?
We have applied the coupon and it will be in your account later. Shall we close this case here?

Best regards,

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