They are having to get all the PCBs remade. It's being "fast tracked", whatever that means. That could cause a pretty substantial delay.
Just speculating, but I used to work in the PCB industry and its common practice to send a customer few "panels" each with a few dozen individual hopper boards on them so they could be tested before assembling the full order (we called these "redline parts" or something like that). There is the raw board itself and there is the assembled board with all of the components placed/soldered on....usually these are two different shops. Raw board defects usually mean a longer delay than assembly defects, which can be tested and fixed before they are shipped.
In this case, it sounds like the raw boards are done and the only issue was that the assembly shop was placing components incorrectly. Sounds like a machine setup issue that requires some extra attention when they do the final run. So the fact that the redline parts had an assembly defect shouldn't delay the delivery of final parts all that much since nothing needs to be redesigned. Maybe they had hoped to ship out a small number of units using the redline PCBs, but if they did they probably wouldnt be able to ship more than 50 using those parts.
What we dont know is whether all of the raw boards have already been produced and are awaiting assembly or whether the redline run was meant to test the raw PCB too. If the PCBs are already made and at assembly then a rush order of new redline parts could be completed in a day or two (then they need to be shipped). If more PCBs need to be run that's going to add at least a few weeks for a rush and longer for regular production.
So the good news... and this is good news... is that the back-end circuitry seems to work as expected and the manufacturing issues only affect timing and not viability of design.
Speculating a little more, it sounds like a few very early backers might get a Grasshopper soon using redline parts but for most of us its still going to be at least a few months more until they ship in any sort of volume. Which jibes with Trevor's email a few pages back saying that the "Ti parts will ship
in bulk about the same time as the Standards". Meaning production ramp up for most of the Grasshoppers has not started and probably wont start until after they ship the "earlybird" redline units.
Patience young grasshopper.
