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What’s the most dramatic failure of a low‑quality component you’ve seen, and how did you diagnose the root cause, evaluate the impact, and prevent it from happening again? We are asking e14 in our Join, Share & Win Competition

E14Alice

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are doing well!

This month’s question was inspired by one that  sent over, so a big thank you to JWx for the suggestion!

If anyone else has questions or ideas they’d like to see featured in AskE14, please send them my way, and I’ll line them up for the coming months.

Now to the question: 

What’s the most dramatic failure of a low‑quality component you’ve seen, and how did you diagnose the root cause, evaluate the impact, and prevent it from happening again?

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Competition Details 

You'll have to be a member of the element14 Community to join in and take part in this “Join, Share & Win” challenge. It's simple, all you have to do is:

1. You need to make sure you are Register or Login
2. Then answer the following question by adding a reply or commenting!

What’s the most dramatic failure of a low‑quality component you’ve seen, and how did you diagnose the root cause, evaluate the impact, and prevent it from happening again?

3. The Community team will then select the best 3 answers to win a UNO R4 Minima! 

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Closing Date: 30th April 

Winners announced: 1st May

UNO R4 Minima

Terms and Conditions 

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  • This isn't about a low cost component, but it was dramatic and terrifying. I was standing nearby when my associate dropped a large wrench that shorted out a large battery capable of supplying over 700 Amps.

    Well, it sounded like an explosion followed by sparks and flames. It was pretty tense while we tried to figure out how to remove the short. Fortunately the wrench eventually melted enough to lose contact with the battery terminals.

    Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the mangled wrench, but the big robotic vehicle we were working on looked like this...

     image

  • in reply to dougw

    At one of the many companies that I have worked with, we were building a home beauty aid (hair removal), that used a very high-power IR laser. We powered the laser with a single Li-Ion battery.  One of the final safety related tests, was to check that a fire could not result in the event of a failure of the any of the redundant overcurrent checks.  So, I modified the software to suppress safety checks and turn on both High-power FETs (high and low side) to the laser.  The battery in this device had no internal protection circuits, as we needed bursts of 90-100 Amps to get sufficient energy from the laser.  There as 'special' press and release sequence of the power switch that would arm the device and it would beep and countdown of ten seconds and then fire away.  The test was to arm the device, place it in a fireproof contained and film the results.  The device would smoke, sizzle, melt and make other awful noises, but not quite catch on fire.  A very strange kind of test, but necessary to get our FDA clearance.

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  • in reply to dougw

    At one of the many companies that I have worked with, we were building a home beauty aid (hair removal), that used a very high-power IR laser. We powered the laser with a single Li-Ion battery.  One of the final safety related tests, was to check that a fire could not result in the event of a failure of the any of the redundant overcurrent checks.  So, I modified the software to suppress safety checks and turn on both High-power FETs (high and low side) to the laser.  The battery in this device had no internal protection circuits, as we needed bursts of 90-100 Amps to get sufficient energy from the laser.  There as 'special' press and release sequence of the power switch that would arm the device and it would beep and countdown of ten seconds and then fire away.  The test was to arm the device, place it in a fireproof contained and film the results.  The device would smoke, sizzle, melt and make other awful noises, but not quite catch on fire.  A very strange kind of test, but necessary to get our FDA clearance.

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