Recently we have seen a blog post from a customer regarding manufacturing issues. Although it is possible that a handful of boards with minor defects can slip through the cracks while they are QA’d at the factory we dispute that all of them show similar issues. There are 150 thousands Arduino boards and 20 thousand more are being manufactured right now and still the percentage of returns is around 0.3% (this includes some boards that have been clearly tampered with that we ask the distributors to replace anyway)

The site http://wtfmoogle.com/?p=1508 has a series of claim the we would like to respond to before the FUD spreads too much. We are sorry if he received a poorly finished board but you can’t claim that thousands of boards are all the same.

We Arduino always try to work for our customers and the community to bring new products that simplify the life of people and make access to technology simpler and simpler. While we do this there can be issues and a few boards can come out not perfect.

We urge you to contact us and we’ll send you a replacement straight away. The reseller has also offered the customer an immediate replacement via a postage paid return envelope as well as a refund.

Issue 1: There is a small leftover on the edge of the PCB that looks like a small “tooth”. We apologise for that, it’s clearly something that went unnoticed when the boards have beet tested. It can be solved with a small file otherwise we’re happy to replace the board directly with no cost for the customer.

Issue 2: There seem to be a reddish orange colour on one of the sides of the board. That unfortunately it’s due to the new packaging. Since we chose a combination of paper and ink that would have a low environmental impact but we realise that in some cases the board can scratch the box if the shipping has been a bit rought. We have read reports from many other users that had no such problem with their boards. User “James Lewis” posts as a reply to moogle’s blog ” My headers are aligned quite well. There is no exposed copper on the Vias near http://www.arduino.cc. No orange marks anywhere on the edges. I will agree the overall routing is much rougher than other PCBs. Your board looks to be the exception and not the norm.”

Issue 3: One of the headers doesn’t seem to be properly soldered it. There is a small tolerance in the position of the header but nothing too crazy. Again I’m sure this is a board that was obviously placed in the wrong bin by the person who inspected them but the board does work properly as they are all tested individually.

Issue 4: There are octagonal pads around the pins. According to moogle this generates more noise than a round pad and it’s a bad bad design decision. Well it might be a problem if this was a very high frequency board, like a radio but the Arduino isn’t. The board has passed the CE and FCC testing for radio emissions with flying colours. This fact is also disputed by user “Grumpy_Mike” on the forum who is involved in FCC certifications.

On the other hand we chose the octagonal pads because they provide a much better grip than the round ones therefore providing more mechanical robustness to the board.

Issue 5: The problem here is “the use of non standard sound pads for surface mount omponents with no silk screen markings to tell you that a part should go there and it is not a test point.”. It’s important to note the picture is one of an unpopulated PCB from an Arduino Duemilanove and not from an UNO. since we don’t sell blank PCBs for the Duemilanove it has been manufactured elsewhere and not by Arduino.

In any case this is a non issue. you would need the footprint silkscreen on the PCB if you where to assemble the boards by hand but since these boards are assembled by a robot we removed them to clean up the board from unnecessary visual clutter.

Issue 6: the picture shows the edge of the board next to the “www.arduino.cc” marking. According to moogle these show exposed copper. In our opinion the just show that the soldermask has thinned around the vias. Again this is something that can happen and I want to reiterate that this is obviously a board that should have stayed in the factory in the “Defective” box.

In the blog user GoldieDpimp who works in a factory that builds board writes “I could take the time and show you how while they are not what we would consider target, they are considered “passable”. There are international standards for these types of things and I don’t see anything that doesn’t look like it wouldn’t be “passable”. It could look better, but I’ve seen worse flying around in airplanes…”

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and again – We Arduino always try to work for our customers and the community to bring new products that simplify the life of people and make access to technology simpler and simpler. While we do this there can be issues and a few boards can come out not perfect.

We urge you to contact us and we’ll send you a replacement straight away. The reseller has also offered the customer an immediate replacement via a postage paid return envelope as well as a refund.

Nobody is perfect but we are nice people who contribute a lot to the community. Please keep that in mind and contact us if you’re having any issue: team(at)arduino.cc or contact your reseller so we can best assist you.