Who in their right mind fills in the solder holes ?

[SpacedCowboy]

So I bought 2 slice-kits (one starter kit, one just the core board) because it's the easiest way to quickly play with multiple CPUs; my team at work is designing a multi-CPU board as an experiment in using XMOS chips, and I wanted to get "ahead of the game" on the software front, having only used one chip at a time before.

Thing is, we're using multiple CPUs because we need lots (and lots) of ports. The Slicekit was interesting because (from the pictures) it had 0.1" headers for each of the ports, so I could "spaghetti-wire" up the various things I needed before the real board was designed and made. Prototyping, you know...

I get the boards, and go to solder the 0.1" headers, and one (I don't know which kit it came from) of the boards has the solder holes all full of solder! Who does this ? What possible purpose could it serve apart from to annoy and frustrate people ? The other board has the holes gloriously available, so (even more weird) why fill the holes on the board in one kit and not the other ?

Now, of course, I don't know which kit has the board that is useful, and which kit has the board that is useless. I'm going to have to design a plug-in PCB to the PCIe slots that just exposes the headers that ought to have been exposed in the first place (and is one of the primary reasons I bought the boards!)

Not impressed, XMOS...

Simon

[babazaroni]

Yeah, that's weird. Probably first production snafus.

Here's a nice extender board with headers for the pcie connector.

http://www.xcore.com/projects/xmos-slic ... ight-angle

[mon2]

Hello Simon. Feel your pain on the plugged holes. Suspecting very highly that the issue is contract manufacturing related and during the automated wave soldering process, someone forgot to mask the referenced through holes and got solder plugged along the way. The fix during production is to apply kapton tape on the same holes to prevent the solder from reaching the area or use a solder pallet (metal openings / closures achieve the same task).

We have raised this fault as a bug on the XMOS portal and apparently the production crew are or were to resolve this severe error. Took us hours to remove the solder from the holes.

See here:
http://www.xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... hilit=mon2

The USB Slicekits look better but there are still QC issues. The recently purchased USB Slicekit has ALL of the through hole (probe holes) solder plugged. Spent hours removing the holes so we can use as intended. XMOS is claiming they have alerted the assembly house to resolve the fault in the future.

On your PCIe expander - perhaps we can help. Please review these projects we posted:

http://www.xcore.com/projects/xmos-slic ... ight-angle

http://www.xcore.com/projects/xmos-slice-extender-board

We have bare PCBs for each variation of the above in-house. Let us know if they are of interest. Will have to check on shipping costs. Are you in the US or Canada or Europe ? If in Europe / Asia, we have some agents in the UK, Germany and related areas and may be able to arrange to ship the boards to their side on our next batch shipment of goods.

You may also use the posted Altium source files to customize to your needs.

[SpacedCowboy]

Hello Simon. Feel your pain on the plugged holes. Suspecting very highly that the issue is contract manufacturing related and during the automated wave soldering process, someone forgot to mask the referenced through holes and got solder plugged along the way. The fix during production is to apply kapton tape on the same holes to prevent the solder from reaching the area or use a solder pallet (metal openings / closures achieve the same task).

We have raised this fault as a bug on the XMOS portal and apparently the production crew are or were to resolve this severe error. Took us hours to remove the solder from the holes.

See here:
http://www.xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... hilit=mon2

The USB Slicekits look better but there are still QC issues. The recently purchased USB Slicekit has ALL of the through hole (probe holes) solder plugged. Spent hours removing the holes so we can use as intended. XMOS is claiming they have alerted the assembly house to resolve the fault in the future.

On your PCIe expander - perhaps we can help. Please review these projects we posted:

http://www.xcore.com/projects/xmos-slic ... ight-angle

http://www.xcore.com/projects/xmos-slice-extender-board

We have bare PCBs for each variation of the above in-house. Let us know if they are of interest. Will have to check on shipping costs. Are you in the US or Canada or Europe ? If in Europe / Asia, we have some agents in the UK, Germany and related areas and may be able to arrange to ship the boards to their side on our next batch shipment of goods.

You may also use the posted Altium source files to customize to your needs.

If you have 3 (don't really mind which type, right angle or not), I'd love to buy them - it'll save some time on doing it myself via a PCB design. I'm in (somewhat overly) sunny CA in the USA.

Cheers
Simon

[mon2]

Hi Simon. Not a problem. The bare PCBs are stock. Are you ok for the 0.1" (2.54 mm) pitch headers ? PCIe edge connectors ? We sourced our pin headers from Shenzhen, China but are fitted using assorted sizes. In the future, we will consider a single block of dual-row for these projects but the present inventory works. You should be able to source them through Digikey or similar. We posted the full details on the PCIe edge connectors but let us know if you require them or not.

Being in the US, we have a discounted 2 day delivery with FedEx @ $15 USD but if not in a rush, can consider Canada Post service for a lower cost (may take a week or so to reach you). The FedEx method includes customs brokerage service so is best to use this option.

The bare pcbs are @ $ 7.50 USD each (we purchased only prototype qty from Shenzhen) and are gold plated for the PCIe fingers, halogen free and 4 layers FR4. Please ping us your details through a private email so we can iron out the payment methods (credit card / paypal are fine).

[SpacedCowboy]

Hi Simon. Not a problem. The bare PCBs are stock. Are you ok for the 0.1" (2.54 mm) pitch headers ? PCIe edge connectors ? We sourced our pin headers from Shenzhen, China but are fitted using assorted sizes. In the future, we will consider a single block of dual-row for these projects but the present inventory works. You should be able to source them through Digikey or similar. We posted the full details on the PCIe edge connectors but let us know if you require them or not.

Being in the US, we have a discounted 2 day delivery with FedEx @ $15 USD but if not in a rush, can consider Canada Post service for a lower cost (may take a week or so to reach you). The FedEx method includes customs brokerage service so is best to use this option.

The bare pcbs are @ $ 7.50 USD each (we purchased only prototype qty from Shenzhen) and are gold plated for the PCIe fingers, halogen free and 4 layers FR4. Please ping us your details through a private email so we can iron out the payment methods (credit card / paypal are fine).

I would do, but the 'send a message' functionality seems to be broken on the forum. I can't type anything into the body-text area. I put my email address into the subject (where I can type) so if you could ping me there I'll be able to send you back an email with the details etc. Paypal is good.

Cheers
Simon