Title :
Fiddly fussy finicky failures can deviously evade detection
Author :
Kirkland, Larry V.
Author_Institution :
WesTest Eng. Corp., Farmington, UT, USA
Abstract :
Why do fiddly fussy finicky failures (F3 Failures) occur is a puzzling question. It could be classified as a natural sequence of events that are eventually going to happen. On the other hand, it should be stated that some failures never occur even though there is a potential they might occur.Preventative maintenance can keep puzzling failures from occurring. Preventative maintenance should not only consist of a set of standard well defined routines but should include a set of routines or tests that might detect and analyze an inevitable failure. There is almost always a point between a healthy condition and an unhealthy condition. An unhealthy condition can be classified as a hard failure. During the time between a healthy and unhealthy condition, puzzling failures tend to occur. Puzzling failures detection can be very useful in determining what is about to happen and what action we need to take to prevent a total or hard failure. Detecting F3 Failures and their true meaning is an elusive science. Another factor is the so-called cascading effect. Sometimes a cascading effect takes place and multiple circuits become defective when inserting faults or probing or when a unit comes in from the field for repair. This occurs even though the so called non-destructive faults are at times impossible to predict or an event occurred in the field. This is not an engineering short come nor is it a technician short come; this is strictly the nature of the beast where theory and reality as far as diagnostics is concerned is not completely understood. This paper will discuss possible repair scenarios for cascading failures. Another problem is taking invalid measurements. Invalid measurements are more common than one might suspect. Determining whether or not a measurement is invalid can be tricky but there are critical steps which must be considered when your repair action does not work.
Keywords :
failure (mechanical); maintenance engineering; nondestructive testing; F3 Failures; cascading effect; cascading failures; fault insertion; fiddly fussy finicky failures; hard failure analysis; healthy condition; inevitable failure analysis; inevitable failure detection; invalid measurements; natural event sequence; nondestructive faults; preventative maintenance; puzzling failure detection; repair scenarios; unhealthy condition; Decision support systems;
Conference_Titel :
AUTOTESTCON, 2014 IEEE
Conference_Location :
St. Louis, MO
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-3389-1
DOI :
10.1109/AUTEST.2014.6935130