Socket Use

William Donzelli wrote: You're dealing with cheap (inexpensive) consumer products. How did they handle in warranty repairs -- toss the part in a box and donate the box to a local tech school? When you're dealing with something that sells for *many* hundreds or *thousands* of dollars, you look at things differently. I.e. if I have to send someone to a remote village in China to service a piece of equipment because the locals can't just *replace* a hammer driver or analog front end, suddenly the cost of all those "extra insertions" looks like *pennies*! The alternative -- telling a customer to keep a full set of spares on hand -- says a LOT about your confidence in your design! :-( And, makes that product look a LOT more expensive to the customer. Quite different than a market where folks can have a stack of modem cards in a desk drawer as spares -- and another customer down the street to borrow from if need be, etc. My first few jobs were doing field service work and managing a production line. That's where I learned what *real* costs were (ignoring, for the time being, opportunity costs and the cost of "bad will" from your customers). But you are looking at it from a consumer products viewpoint. High volume, drive the cost and quality as low as the market will tolerate. And, if something fails, just replace it (since the labor cost of *repairing* -- not just "retesting" -- a "defective" product exceeds the DM+DL for that product). Imagine the device you are selling is used in a manufacturing environment. I.e. someone relies on your device to make *their* products. Being "down" for an hour, day, *week* can cost more than your product -- even if your product was a few kilobucks. Most manfacturing lines have a hard time justifying a complete set of spares. And, expecting your field tech to carry *everything* that could ned to be replaced makes his job harder (and, more costly to you). OTOH, if your design supports repair in the field, then you have more options available. Customers don't want to have EE's on their payroll *just* in case something needs troubleshooting. *But*, having a *tech* on their payroll who can take direction from someone (over the phone) and replace components without butchering a board (trying to unsolder components) Exactly. And, just like writing code, you have to *measure* before making decisions. Listen to the manufacturing engineer who is SOLELY concerned with his yields and never bears the cost of lost sales, service calls, stocking costs, etc. and you get a stilted view of what the REAL costs are. They are just as guilty of monovision as the design engineer who never walks the floor. Caps are as likely to fail as a socket -- do you keep caps out of a design? *Or*, do you design them in WITH PLENTY OF MARGIN?