HALT / HASS Systems: Empowering Product Reliability

HALT / HASS Systems

Qualmark HALT testing (Highly Accelerated Life Test) and HASS testing (Highly Accelerated Stress Screen) chamber systems are designed and manufactured by Qualmark specifically to provide the industry with accelerated reliability testing capability. The technology has matured from a thermal chamber with a vibration table and independent controls to an integrated HALT/HASS system. Qualmark’s Typhoon series is the most energy efficient on the market. Now in its 18th year of production, the technology has matured to provide the extreme stresses necessary to rapidly find design flaws missed by traditional methods.

The Typhoon’s Omni-Axial ™ six degree of freedom, random, broadband excitation (10 Hz to above 5,000Hz) delivers a consistent power spectral density profile that eliminates picket fencing. The thermal system features vacuum jacketed liquid nitrogen injection cooling, open element nichrome heating, and offers temperature ranges of +200°C to -100°C with ramp rates of 60˚C per minute. The Typhoon comes equipped with Qualmark’s powerful custom control system designed for both lab and production environments.

Qualmark has consistently been the market leader since introducing our copyrighted HALT/HASS technology in the early 1990s. Today, Qualmark technology continues to reflect the best design in advanced HALT/HASS engineering to deliver optimum test performance for the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.

Qualmark HALT/HASS are used in Many Industries including

Automotive
Avionics
Defence
Electronics
Medical
Oil & Gas Exploration
Renewable Energy
Telecommunication

HALT – Highly Accelerated Life Test & HASS – Highly Accelerated Stress Screen

HALT & HASS are unique, accelerated product reliability testing methods focused on finding defects in products so they can be fixed before becoming expensive field issues.

Unique because HALT and HASS are different from traditional design verification testing – different goals, different stresses, different results.
Accelerated, because HALT and HASS reveal product failure modes in a matter of hours or days, as compared to traditional test methods that can take weeks or even months to find, if at all.

HALT and HASS, collectively referred to as Accelerated Stress Testing (AST), subject a product to a series of overstresses, effectively forcing product weak links to emerge by accelerating fatigue. Unlike traditional single axis vibration test methods or thermal only methods, an AST program requires specialized HALT/HASS equipment to render the required stresses – random six-degree-of-freedom vibration and rapid thermal change rates – in the combined environment necessary to drive out latent failure modes.

In HALT and HASS, stresses are applied in a controlled, incremental fashion while the unit under test is continuously monitored for failures. Once the weaknesses of the product are uncovered and corrective actions taken, the limits of the product are clearly understood and the operating margins have been extended as far as possible. Result? A much more mature product can be introduced much more quickly with a higher degree of reliability.

Unlike DVT (Design Verification Testing), the purpose of HALT is to determine the operating and destruct limits of a design – why those limitations exist and what is required to increase those margins. HALT, therefore, stresses products beyond their design specifications.

HALT provides engineers with the opportunity to improve product design, increasing its robustness and minimizing possibility of costly warranty services and expensive product recalls after release.

The OVTT™, Omni-Axial Vibration Table Top system, is the first, stand-alone, compact, repetitive-shock vibration system on the market. The OVTT 18 system is ideal for No Fault Found (NFF) precipitation screens of field returns, repair verification and random vibration test of small products. The OVTT 18 utilizes Qualmark’s patented six-degree-of-freedom vibration technology and is designed with reduced air requirements and low noice levels. The OVTT 18 system can be easily configured for placement inside a thermal chamber for combined stress tests.

Qfusion First Ever Production Specific Accelerated Stress Test System

QFusion technology introduces the first new design of accelerated stress test systems in 2 decades and is the first ever technology engineered specifically for performing HASS/HASA. QFusion’s patent pending design includes an OmniAxial Vibration System™ (OVS™) and an UltraRateV thermal system that can simultaneously expose product under test to vibration and temperatures at very rapid change rates. QFusion technology packages 6 degree of freedom, random shock vibration and rapid thermal ramp stresses in an extremely efficient, but surprisingly quiet system with a space-saving footprint half the size of typical HALT/HASS systems. Its unique 6 compartment configuration, using multiple, independent vibration tables, delivers consistent vibration stresses to all test positions. The uniform, high speed airflow from the high performance thermal system maintains thermal stability while radically reducing the time to reach and stabilize at set points.

Typhoon 1.5, with its 18″ x 18″ vibration table, is perfect for performing Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) on small products, or where limited lab space is available. This compact system is built using Qualmark’s Typhoon system technology which delivers impressive thermal performance, six-degree-of-freedom repetitive-shock vibration, and is highly efficient in LN2 usage and power consumption. The Typhoon 1.5 is a practical addition to any company’s product reliability program.

Typhoon 2.0, with its 24″ x 24″ vibration table, is perfect for performing Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) on small products, or where limited lab space is available. This compact system is built using Qualmark’s Typhoon system technology which delivers impressive thermal performance and six-degree-of-freedom repetitive-shock vibration, and is highly efficient in LN2 usage and power consumption. The Typhoon 2.0 is a practical addition to any company’s product reliability program.

Typhoon 2.5 is the most popular chamber in the Accelerated Stress Test (AST) Industry. Its 30″ x 30″ vibration table size is optimal for Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) applications as well as many Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS) applications. Designed with Typhoon technology which has the lowest total costs of ownership (TCO), the 2.5 is a multi-tasking system with over 325 produced for rapid ROI in both design and production engineering environments. The Typhoon 2.5 was Qualmark’s first chamber to have the xLF vibration technology which enables a more rapid stimulation of design and production failures. The 2.5 continues to deliver superior results even while manufacturing technology advances in product robustness.

Typhoon 3.0 is the most popular chamber in the AST industry and is specifically designed to help the customer who is performing low volume HASS and needs a chamber with a 36″ x 36″ vibration table. It is also ideal for performing HALT on mid-sized and larger products. Like our Typhoon 4.0, the Typhoon 3.0 vibration table mounts at two different heights, so the interior chamber volume can be adjusted for the needs of the product.

Typhoon 4.0 system is designed specifically for the task of performing Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS) and HALT on large products. With the Lowest Total Cost of Ownership within the AST industry, the 48″ x 48″ vibration table is capable of supporting hundreds of pounds of products and fixturing, and delivers more energy in the lower frequency ranges necessary to stimulate failures in these large products. For high temperature applications and stimulating faults in a harsh environment this system is available as the Inferno™ which can deliver temperatures up to 250°C.

Typhoon 8.0 doubles the width of our popular Typhoon 4.0 chamber. The thermal system in the Typhoon series has been carefully engineered to have superior thermal efficiency. Key design elements such as our patented blower technology, highly efficient air flow characteristics and careful choice of materials have combined to keep liquid nitrogen and electricity costs down without compromising our industry standard thermal performance. The Typhoon 8.0 has the largest vibration table available in a HALT/HASS chamber.