Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

Accendo Reliability

Reliability Engineering Professional Development
  • About
    • Adam Bahret
    • Andre Kleyner
    • Anne Meixner
    • Ash Norton
    • Carl Carlson
    • Chris Jackson
    • Chris Stapelmann
    • Dennis Craggs
    • Doug Plucknette
    • Fred Schenkelberg
    • Greg Hutchins
    • James Kovacevic
    • James Reyes-Picknell
    • John Paschkewitz
    • Katie Switzer
    • Kevin Stewart
    • Kirk Gray
    • Les Warrington
    • Mike Konrad
    • Mike Sondalini
    • Perry Parendo
    • Rob Allen
    • Robert Kalwarowsky
    • Steven Wachs
    • Tim Rodgers
  • Reliability.fm
    • Dare to Know
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Rob’s Reliability Project
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
    • Asset Reliability @ Work
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Plant Maintenance
      • RCM Blitz®
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Inside FMEA
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • Reliability Reflections
  • eBooks
    • Reliability Engineering Management DRAFT
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Groups
    • Reliability Integration
    • Mastermind
    • Study Groups
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • 5-day Reliability Green Belt ® Course
    • 5-day Reliability Black Belt ® Course
    • CRE Preparation Course
    • RAMwright Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Kirk Gray Leave a Comment

Will reparable designs help reduce electronics waste?

Will reparable designs help reduce electronics waste?

Another one bites the dust!

Apparently, my lovely wife is one of the best at finding stress testing limits of kitchen blenders, or we are unlucky at getting blenders that had some latent defect.  She has discovered the destruct limit of 3 blenders within months of use. She does not do in the formal HALT methodology, as they break in what most would consider normal use conditions. It may have been a valid HALT evaluation if she had started with soft or easy to blend materials, starting with o ice or nuts and measured the time to reach its destruct limit.

The range in cost of these blenders has been from $100 to about $26. There did not seem to be a significant reliability difference correlation with price.

All failed during a heavy load, such as grinding ice or chocolate chips.  The failure mode would be that smoke would come out of the base and it would not operate again.

Being a reliability engineer has made me always curious to why things break, especially appliances that should have lasted much longer, such as kitchen blenders.

So naturally, I took one apart by removing its base. Here is the photo of the base with the cover off.

 

Blenders are simple designs.

Basically a motor with speed control switches and easily separable mechanical link to the blades inside the blender container. Inside this blender, I could see the small circuit with a replaceable fuse, under the fan blade in the first image.

It is clear to see that with the dark burn mark on the fuse glass indicates it has done its job. It is a relatively inexpensive device costing a few cents, and it is in a replaceable holder. Unfortunately, it is not likely that the typical customer would disassemble the base to find this easily replaceable device and use the blender again. Another consideration is that the burned fuse may have been caused by a motor failure or the motor was damaged and replacing the fuse may not have fixed the blender.

Was there a better alternative?

How was the design decision made to place the replaceable fuse in a difficult to replace location that most users would not find? For electrical appliances, safety is a major consideration. In this case, the fuse did its job. It resulted in the failure of the blender. Most users are likely would toss this in the trash as with most low-cost product is hard to justify sending to a repair shop.

What alternative and at what cost could the designer have to use a resettable fuse, or put the fuse in a more accessible location to be replaced if needed?

It may have cost a few cents more or a dollar or two to make the fuse more easily replaceable or make it an externally resettable protection device, but lost future sales and brand reputation may have cost much more.

What do you think? Should the design for over-current protection be different?

 

 

 

For more articles about HALT and Accelerated Reliability on Accendo Reliability click here

For more information about Kirk’s Consulting services, please click here to see his Accelerated Reliability Solutions

To see or purchase Kirk’s new book co-authored with John Paschkewitz, “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust Design of Electronics and Systems” please click on this link.

 

 

Filed Under: Accelerated Reliability, Articles, on Product Reliability

« Road Rally
Process Capability V – Variation Reduction »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Article by Kirk Gray
in the Accelerated Reliability series

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • Benefits of Comparing DMAIC with Project Management
  • The Rover Says Good Bye! :(
  • 100% Inspection
  • Don’t Need a Science Project
  • Don’t Forget to Subscribe to our Weekly Email Updates!

© 2019 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service