SparkFun Electronics

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Quarter Million Widgets and Counting

by Nate |

July 2, 2009 |

SparkFun has produced a quarter million widgets! We built our 250,000 widget sometime last week. Some people are surprised to hear that we test every single unit. Yep. On top of that, production is currently working at greater than 98% success rates. They're killing it! Beat that, Apple.

Pete Lewis has posted a new tutorial on testing with bed-of-nails and pogo pins to show the world how SparkFun does it. We didn't take this class in college, so we're really just making it up as we go along. We hope you can learn something from it!

Remember, creating a widget is just a small part of the process. Figuring out how to build it quickly and test it efficiently is over half the battle.

Comments

11 comments

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	by keystoneclimber +1 \| July 2, 2009 at 12:09 AM 0
Speaking of shocks, I hope you guys take better precautions with regards to static while doing the actual QC testing!

	by Jassper +7.9 \| July 3, 2009 at 10:32 AM 0
Which begs the question, Just how common is damage due to static discharge?

	by CiricTech +2 \| July 2, 2009 at 4:03 PM 0
Thank you for this, it is a great deal of very useful information. Keep up the great work and congratulation on the 250,000 devices.

	by Calif –1.7 \| July 2, 2009 at 4:12 PM 0
Well Apple's Chinese fabricator makes widgets that are a bit more substantial than a logomatic, but no-one has ever documented their yield.

	by Nate \| July 2, 2009 at 4:14 PM
You're completely right. I was taking a pretty mean shot at Apple. But I did hear the yields on the Apple iPhone were pretty horrendously low - approaching 50%, but that's just rumors.

	by Jassper +7.9 \| July 3, 2009 at 10:33 AM 0
They need to keep it cooler in their labs, fruit wouldn't spoil so quickly. ;)

	by Rock +1 \| July 2, 2009 at 6:30 PM 0
Great info on test bed construction. What happen's to the employee that dosen't replace the tool to the correct place ?

	by Tommy James \| July 3, 2009 at 0:45 AM
We take the guilty employee into an empty room, interrogate them, berate them, and finally stone them for no less than three hours while they hold said tool above their head and hop from foot to foot and chant the SparkFun chant. (if they fail either the hopping or chanting they receive an extra hour of hopping AND chanting AND double stoning). SparkFun. It's a hard knock life.

	by JLArmstrong +1 \| July 3, 2009 at 9:12 AM 0
Guys -- great job! Sparkfun is definitely fun.

	by St.Eligius +1 \| July 3, 2009 at 4:34 PM 0
I would recommend dropping the music volume by 20 to 255, Its kind of hart to hear him a few times in there.

	by St.Eligius +1 \| July 3, 2009 at 4:35 PM 0
Should read 25% instead of 255.

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