Contact Us

Use the form on the right to contact us or,

email us at info@elmetlabs.com,

or call us at (248) 957-1170.

We will get back to you as soon as possible.

24073 Research Drive
Farmington Hills, MI, 48335
United States

(248)957-1170

Elmet LLC is primarily a metallurgical and metallographic laboratory focused on the electrical and electronics industries.  All circuit boards, connectors, clips, cages, and electrical devices have metallic components that can suffer damage or fail due to causes such as fatigue, corrosion, stress overload, dendritic growth, and fretting.  These are metallurgical issues, not electrical issues, and a metallurgical perspective brings insight into the problem.  We provide that insight through investigation and thorough explanation of the metallurgical factors at work, from manufacturing defects to design to conditions of use.

Much of our work is solder joint cross sectioning, and we have a large capacity to handle this type of work.  With five automated polishers we can process more than 20 cross sections per day, day after day.  We have two metallographic studios with studio cameras, stereomicroscopes, and metallurgical microscopes to document the incoming parts, the cross sections, and the microstructures. Our scanning electron microscope assists us in evaluating intermetallic layers, microstructures, fretting, and fracture.  The EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy) system allows us to analyze solder compositions, contamination, and debris observed on circuit boards.

We have staff holding certificates in IPC-A-610 inspection (CIS), electrical engineering, and metallurgical engineering, and we have a great deal of experience with failure analysis of metallic components. 

Tech Topics

Filtering by Tag: TNF

Warranty Returns, NTFs, and Recall Campaigns

Derek Chavez

Our proprietary mounting and polishing process gives us the ability to target the same component or set of components on the same board in large numbers, repeatedly, quickly and with great accuracy. In the past, this has been a valuable skill to several of our customers during warranty or recall campaigns, and it could be to you too!

We have taken part in the warranty process at several stages. In some cases, parts have come back from the field with a known failure mode and the OEM and supplier have agreed that the results of cross-sectioning a particular solder joint, screw, weld, axel, through hole or trace will be used to determine a liability split, and we have been contracted as a third party to perform the work. We have also inspected features via X-Ray, used Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to diagnose failure modes and causes, or provided high magnification photographs to identify changes or variations in component manufacture. We can present you and your customer or buyer with the raw data, or you can supply us with pass/fail rules to make the determination.

How does this work in the real world? Suppose that you are supplying a controller for a car’s air conditioning system, and you are getting many warranty returns where the blower does not turn on. The vehicle OEM has collaborated with you and the blower motor supplier and found that this issue can be caused by a particular cracked solder joint on your controller board, or a stuck motor brush. You and the vehicle OEM have agreed to a scheme where Elmet will cross section the suspect joint on a sample of 100 boards returned for this issue, measure the length of any cracks in terms of a percentage, and return to you and the OEM all results and supporting images. From there you may agree to pay warranty or service costs related to the population with greater than 50% crack length, or only those that are fully cracked, for example.

Maybe you discovered that your plant has been using PCBAs from a supplier who operated for a month with an incorrect thermal reflow profile and you want to determine if this has changed the properties of the solder joints. We could cross section dozens, even hundreds, of suspect boards for comparison with your validation artifacts to help you determine your exposure to risk.

On occasion a customer will come to us with a single circuit board for which they have narrowed the problem source down to a single component or area of the board. Or sometimes a customer has a small number of “No Trouble Found” or “intermittent operation” parts that have been returned. We can inspect questionable boards, areas of a board or specific components visually or via X-Ray or SEM for solder issues, tin whiskers or other manufacturing defects to supplement your normal warranty work.

tags Warranty, Recall, NTF, TNF, TNI