[sdiy] PCB assembly house board failure rates?

[Justin Owen]

Hello,

I'd be interested in what people would consider an 'average' or 'fair' failure rate as a percentage for boards assembled by a professional PCB house - based on their own experiences.

Acknowledging...

(1) that's a wide open question to interpret, so let's say boards of up to 200 non-exotic, surface mount components and up to a half-dozen bits of through-hole hardware i.e. Pots, Sockets etc. on a reasonably densely populated 2 layer board. Synth stuff basically...

and...

(2) I'm not talking about the times when something just goes completely wrong due to some sort of traceable failure.

Fair wear and tear, average attrition, etc.

FWIW - I'm asking because I notice that as I start using smaller and smaller parts in my own hand-soldered designs/protos, etc, I feel like my own attrition/failure rate is going up a bit. I was wondering if manufacturers faced the same thresholds and how they would generally deal with that?

Thanks!

Justin