six-foot drop test

Dropbox? Six-foot drop test. :-)

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill
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I guy I knew in grad school was an ex navy electronics tech. When something was not working and we couldn't figure out what was wrong, he would suggest that we 'float test' it.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

When I need to test a client prototype for ruggedness I strap it to the rack of my mountain bike and hammer down a trail. Like this one from Lotus to Folsom:

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If it lives, it's good.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

In my field of jukeboxes (along with other coin-operated toys) the story was that the best of the manufacturers, back in the 1940s, required that a jukebox would be packed so that it could fall off a truck loading dock, while packed in the factory crate, and survive. Roughly 5 feet...

Wurlitzer sure built them tough in those days!

John :-#)#

Reply to
John Robertson

This thought is not with out merit.

While working on customers phone systems, their were a few extension phones that were not working. From dead LCD display or would not connect to the KSU.

After checking all the normal stuff such as a bad cord or a bad jack and other obvious possibilities. I would tell the customer not to watch the following action.

I would then lift the phone off the desk about 3 feet and just drop it. A lot of times it would then start to work. Yea!!

If it didn't, I would do the reverse drop test it, where I would flip it over and drop it again. A few times it would work.

If neither worked, it would either go out for repair or be "circular filed". I would explain to the customer that they should NOT attempt since I was trained and qualified to perform the "drop test".

Sometimes the dumb stuff actually works.

Les

Reply to
ABLE1

Do airconditioners count?

Funny thing, while putting the window unit in, it pirouetted out on a corner rotated 90 degrees, slipped out of my grasp, and fell 6' onto brick pavers. must have been almost flat with the condensor. Just some minor sheet metal damage, and a bent corner tube of the condensor. Been running like a champ all weekend. Have to wait for next year to say it survived the 6' fall.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

So is the rider. And the bike.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

When I was working at ITT-Creed, from 1979 to 1982 - they had been making T elex machines since the 1930's and were trying to move into communicating w ord processors that would exploit the Teletex protocol (which was actually used for few years in Sweden and Germany until e-mail replaced it) - I once got to hear an ITT production guy talking about the balance between making a machine more robust, and paying for bulkier and more elaborate packaging that allowed the machine in the package to move far enough to decelerate m ore slowly the outsides of the package when the package got dropped onto a hard surface.

They manufactured and shipped in high enough volumes that it was worth work ing out the optimal trade-off.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

A friend threw an older evaporative cooler over the 2nd floor balcony railing into his yard. One of those 4ft metal monster cubes. Ka-CRASH. Due to the big AC motor in there it got bent quite seriously. He was planning to junk it and replace it with one of the new flat propeller plastic units from Australia. It looked much nicer but that turned out to be a mistake. Noisy, poorly balanced, didn't cool as good. So he hoisted the old unit back up, banged it back into shape, connected it back up, ran fine ever since.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

I made the post, with Tektronix' classic drop test in mind. I can bring up a photo image in my mind, one of their big tube 'scopes, strapped *flat* to a dropping fixture, onto a thick rubber bottom pad, calibrated for the intended G-force shock test. But Google wasn't able to find this image for me.

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

Made some logic/test probes once. Encased in 2-part filled epoxy. Connections through tapped brass inserts - indicators recessed leds. 6"x1"x0.5" You could play mumbley-peg with it, with the suitable probe tip installed.

One day, proudly demonstrating the ruggedness of one of them, I casually flipped it into the air - it landed absolutely flat on one surface and shattered.

So, drop test it 50x . . . . or just once in front of important witnesses.

RL

Reply to
legg

Defective epoxy?

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

A long time ago a friend survived an air crash somewhere remote - probably in South America. His portable Tek 'scope tumbled onto the runway as the aircraft broke up and was scorched and then covered in firefighting foam. It still worked afterwards. He sent it back to Tek for refurbishment but instead they gave him a new one and kept the old one for publicity purposes.

John

Reply to
jrwalliker

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