Pandora Blog News - Good things happen in Texas

News via http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en

Michael had a looong conference call with the board production company today to discuss about how to proceed and speed up production.

Here is a short summary of the results of the discussion with them and the current plans of both us and the company:

Basically, they built enough boards now to know what things they have to take care of during board production to produce high quality boards - which means: They know how long they approximately need for producing and testing them.

Additionally, to speed things up, they agreed to produce and test the rest of the remaining boards even if there are no nubs ready yet!
So as soon as the new nubs are finished (probably sometime in September), there will be a lot of working boards waiting to get the nubs soldered-on.
We will most likely get a massive batch of finished boards in September... and we'll make sure we have enough cases prepared when they come.

The company wants to have the first batch finished mid-October. Our original plans before we knew about the nubs was to finish everything end of September - so we're not that far behind.

The parts for Batch 2 should also be available mid-October - so Batch 2 should start directly after Batch 1 is finished. That does mean: Batch 2 should be finished by Christmas.

Please keep in mind that these guesstimations are not our guesstimations - but actual plans of the board company. Will they be able to do it? We don't know yet, but we're optimistic. We also hope all parts for Batch 2 will arrive in time. With such crazy leadtimes (12 - 14 weeks), you never know.

So, once again, the plan in short:

Board production will now start in fullspeed, finished probably mid-October (Batch 1) or by Christmas (Batch 2).
Until the new nubs are there, the boards will be produced, fully tested and stored. As soon as the nubs arrive, they will be soldered onto the boards and everything will be shipped to UK.

While that happens, I will solder tons of LCD cables, while Craig and his helpers will prepare the cases and the lids for the big batch of boards.

Then all we need to do is try to keep up with the board production speed... wish us luck :)