From the Lab ...

... Hacking and Slashing since 2002

Title: Crappy Manufacturing
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My wife and I were recently talking, and I said that I wanted to start a website called Crappy Chinese Manufacturing. She admonished me by stating that such websites already exist. They're called D.... and F... B..... Redact that please. 
 
Here's a prime example, except these were not cheap headphones. And yet they broke less than a month after we purchased them. Albeit young boys are hard on stuff, but come on ... a month! Failure mode was a lack of charging. 
 
This is the main board, and that shiny thing is the USB micro connector. You may notice that the 2 pins on the ends of the connector have broken free from the board (let's call them pins #1 and #5). As one would plug in, or unplug, the USB cable, one might put lateral stress on the connector, thus breaking the connections. The cheap manufacturer couldn't spare the few extra pennies to buy an appropriate connector that had mechanical support at both the front AND rear. 
IMG_5067.JPG 
 
So I took the time to scrape the solder mask and mechanically attach the back end of the connector to the board. In the past 4 months, we've had no new failures. By the way, they used CSR for their bluetooth chipset. 
IMG_5071.JPG 


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