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I'm looking to have a few hundred boards made and they all have an MCU on them, that will need programming. With large scale production, it seems the way to go is usually programming the IC/MCU before mounting it onto the PCB. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem like a cheap route to take for a few hundred boards.

Other options I've seen were of course some kind of headers, either just regular programming headers or even TagConnect, but that seems very time consuming.

I also looked into programming jigs, like bed of nails test jigs, but not sure how well those would work.

Any recommendations on this front?

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    \$\begingroup\$ What sort of MCU? Some manufacturers will program batches for a reasonable cost nowadays. Even some vendors (e.g. digikey) will program some ICs for you for a fee. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tom Carpenter
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 22:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ @TomCarpenter Specifically a BC805M nrf board. Current best price I can get my hand (unincorporated) is from mouser. I heard they had a programming service some time ago, can't find it anymore. \$\endgroup\$
    – Gorbit99
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 22:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ It depends a bit on how you value your production time. Also, if programming is carried out as part of testing it may not add significant time. The cost of designing and building a bed of nails test/programming fixture amortized over only a few hundred boards may not be all that low, but if it's a continuing need it may make sense. Whatever you do, you'd have to be very "brave" to leave out a means of reprogramming, so that overhead is likely required. \$\endgroup\$
    – Spehro Pefhany
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 22:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SpehroPefhany definitely wouldn't leave that out, but having one tagconnect or some header pins or whatever in case something goes wrong, while also having them programmed would be a nice to have \$\endgroup\$
    – Gorbit99
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 22:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ A smallish caveat about buying your own chips preprogrammed in small quants is that a lot of board assembly houses prefer to kit out parts using their own resources in effort to keep their production lines humming along. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 22:35

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Batches that size are usually programmed with a nail-bed adapter and normal programmers in our company. It works in larger batches, even. It is usually worth to build a little automation around that if you don't want to click "Flash" every other board :) I built a little multi-programmer that flashes 6 boards in a pneumatic nailbed and does basic electrical tests at the same time, as well as write calibration values for the quartz. It programs around 250k PCBs a year and works fine. You only need to change the needles of the nailbed now and then.

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