Splitting a Product for HALT Focus
Abstract
Kirk and Fred discussing underwater drones and how we divide up a product to most efficiently apply HALT to subsystems before applying stress to the whole product
Key Points
Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss ways that they have split up a product for HALT when there are known limitations of mechanical subsystems controlled by electronics
Topics include:
- Mechanical systems may have temperature or vibration limitations, such as a spinning hard disk or tape/tape head interfaces, that solid state electronics will operate at much higher temperatures in HALT
- Power supplies in HALT can be loaded with static loads but this may not show what dynamic loads occur during product use that can show up as weaknesses in HALT
- The best HALT is done when the product can be divided and HALT can be applied to separate subsystems inside the environmental chamber but run against the rest of the actual system which may be outside the chamber.
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Show Notes
Here is a link to the article on the underwater Starfish killing drone and how it autonomously hunts and injects poison into coral damaging starfish
Here is a link to Kirk’s book co-authored with John J. Paschkewitz available from Amazon “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust Design of Electronics and Systems”
Hi Fred/Kirk,
I was listening to this episode and had a question: Why do you need to separate out the hard disk while testing the laptop electronics? If we know that in any high-stress level that hard disk is going to be the first one to fail then why bother testing the rest of the electronics if the entire package is always going to be together? We have identified the weakest link and it is going to fail and bring the product down in any stress.
What is wrong in improving the weakest link before conducting a HALT on the rest of the components? Please answer.
Thank you,
Arun Gowtham
Hi Arun,
Thanks for listening to the podcast and your excellent question.
The reason we separate systems during HALT is that the vibration stress limits for devices like a HDD and other systems compared to PWBA’s.
The goal is to find weaknesses in the subsystems and the vibration limit for HDD’s would be to low in intensity to show the potential vibration induced weaknesses in circuit boards that may occur much later due to cummulative fatigue damage over time.
Best Regards,
Kirk