3 ms·
From working tangentially in consumer electronics, I can tell you that nearly all failures are design related if you look deep enough. There are some products
by londons_explore 3y ago
From working tangentially in consumer electronics, I can tell you that nearly all failures are design related if you look deep enough.
There are some products where some start dying after 1 year, and nearly all of them are dead after 2 years.
Other times it's a combination of a bad design and some specific use case. For example "these fail after 3 years if you turn them on and off every day, but don't fail if you leave them running 24x7".
- lelag 3y agoOr sometimes they will die if you leave them on for 40000 hours. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148
- HPsquared 3y agoSolder joints seem to be a major failure. That'd be mostly fatigue (thermal cycling) and the occasional case of tin whiskers.
- londons_explore 3y agoYes, but in turn the failure is because the thermal expansion coefficient of the board and component were insufficiently closely matched (when taking into account the elasticity of the board and component)
- giantrobot 3y agoLead-free solder is just shittier than leaded solder. You're not wrong about design but better solder would reduce the impact of mismatched thermal expansion properties.
- jandrese 3y agoBGAs and hot chips are a bad combo.
- toast0 3y agoRemoving lead from solder should reduce lead poisoning and environmental lead in general, which is good. Unfortunately, lead-free solder is objectively worse than leaded solder in terms of longevity of joints as well as requiring a greater working temperature. Things have gotten a lot better since introduction though.