Arduino manufacturing problems

After reading a post on hackaday Next generation Arduino manufacturing problems it has prompted me to photograph my new Arduino mega 2560 which frankly looks a bit sloppy.

The first thing that struck me was the burnt flux on the main chip:

Arduino Mega Flux

Then I noticed staining on around the caps too, nothing that affects the functionality of the unit but it left me feeling disappointed. This arduino cost me £57 + shipping + a new ethernet shield to use with it (which is incidentally, absolutely perfectly manufactured and really shows up the mega). My board also had sharp bits on but I filed them off. I paid a premium price to get what I thought was a premium quality product, clearly I was wrong and will think twice before buying any official arduino hardware again.

Arduino staining

And don’t even get me started on releasing the boards before there was linux support. At first I thought I had faulty hardware after seeing it and then it not working.