Understanding how HALT and HASS aid in creating a better product requires a grasp of these testing methods.
We'll start with a brief overview of each, followed by the main highlights:
HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test): During product development, HALT is used to detect early weaknesses by progressively increasing stress levels until the component fails. Afterward, weaker components are substituted with stronger ones, improving product reliability and potentially predicting an extended product lifespan.
HALT is performed during the prototyping (design phase).
HALT is a crucial tool for predicting potential failures throughout the product’s life.
Furthermore, HALT helps identify the product's ultimate limits.
HALT is an effective way to lower warranty costs by detecting possible failures before they occur in the field.
HALT enhances the understanding of the product’s behavior.
HALT is most effective when multiple stresses are applied simultaneously, such as temperature, vibration, voltage, temperature ramp rates, etc.
HALT is also used during R&D stages to identify design flaws.
HALT pushes a product to its failure point.
Pushing a product to its limits through testing provides numerous benefits. HALT testing uncovers design issues that might not surface in real-world conditions for years. For example, it can identify exposed electrical connections prone to corrosion, mechanical supports that lack sufficient strength, or switches that might malfunction under the stress of intense vibration in cold environments.
Through HALT testing, the engineering, QA, manufacturing, and program management teams can evaluate the results and integrate them into an updated design to address and remove flaws and weaknesses.
HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening) is a production screening method designed to identify and eliminate weak components or failures. It accelerates the real-world lifespan of a product by applying multiple stresses, including temperature and vibration, and sometimes voltage and humidity. The main goal of HASS is to reveal latent defects that might have been introduced during manufacturing. These defects are usually related to design and should have been identified and removed through reliability enhancement testing in the design phase.
HASS is conducted during the manufacturing (production) phase.
HASS involves a series of tests that can be applied to anywhere from 1 to 100 percent of the outgoing products.
HASS minimizes failures in the field.
HASS subjects products to conditions more extreme than those they would typically encounter in the field.
HASS serves as an inspection process.
HASS applies stresses that reveal numerous flaws present in the production process, such as cold solder joints, loose hardware, defective components, etc.
HASS identifies these flaws in the shortest time possible.
HASS is an indicator of reliability.
The expense and occurrence of product failures in the field can be very high. However, utilizing HASS enables manufacturers to detect failures before they happen in the field. This approach saves money, time, and reputation, while also decreasing the number of faults that must be managed in the field.
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