Spent six hours tracking down a short that turned out to be a tiny solder whisker bridging two pins on a connector I'd checked three times already.

Has anyone else had a defect that small eat up that much of your day before you finally spotted it?

2 comments

2 Comments

Oh I don't know, seems like you caught it pretty fast to me. A solder whisker is about as tiny as defects get and six hours is honestly not that bad for something that small. Be grateful it wasn't a lifted pad or a microscopic crack in a trace that would've taken days to find.

samw4726d ago

Man I gotta respectfully disagree here. Six hours is brutal when you're under a deadline or the customer is breathing down your neck. A solder whisker might be tiny but it's not like a random trace crack that requires an x-ray machine or microscope to even spot. If you've got a good magnifier and some experience you can usually find those whiskers in under two hours if you're systematic about it. The real gut punch is when you finally find it and realize it was visible the whole time but you just didn't look at the right angle. I'd argue a stubborn cold joint that passes continuity but fails under vibration is way harder than any whisker.