FIELD NOTES
Get better at hardware test.
Guides, tutorials, and best practices to help you build better hardware tests.
- Quality & Process Control
Add AI Visual Inspection to Your Tests
Learn how to add AI visual inspection to your tests: capture each solder joint, flag suspects with a vision model, and have operators confirm.
- Quality & Process Control
Why ESC Solder Joints Fail in Flight
Learn why power-lead solder joints on drone ESCs pass bench tests but open in flight, and how to fix, detect and track them per operator.
- Quality & Process Control
Why Units Pass the Bench but Fail in the Field
Learn why units pass production test but fail in the field: coverage gaps, wide limits, intermittent faults, and how to feed returns back into the test.
- Quality & Process Control
Why Is My Yield Dropping?
Nothing changed in the design but boards started failing. A practical method for finding the cause using test data you already have, or should be recording.
- Quality & Process Control
Setting Alert Thresholds That Actually Work
Why a fixed yield threshold fails on real production lines, and how a self-calibrating EWMA detector finds the right band for each one.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is a Histogram in Manufacturing Test
A histogram shows the distribution shape of your measurement data. Learn how to read histogram patterns, spot problems, and use them for SPC in TofuPilot.
- Quality & Process Control
Cpk vs Ppk: What's the Difference
Cpk and Ppk both measure process capability, but use different standard deviations. Learn when to use each, what the gap reveals, and compare them in TofuPilot.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is Ppl and Ppu (One-Sided Performance)
Ppl and Ppu measure long-term process performance against individual spec limits. Learn the formulas, how they relate to Cpl/Cpu, and track them in TofuPilot.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is Cpl and Cpu (One-Sided Capability)
CPL and CPU measure capability against a single specification limit. How to calculate them, when to use them, and how to record one-sided measurements.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is Pp (Overall Process Performance)
Pp measures long-term process spread relative to spec width using overall standard deviation. Learn the formula, compare Pp to Cp, and track it in TofuPilot.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is Ppk (Process Performance Index)
Ppk measures long-term process performance using overall standard deviation. Learn how it differs from Cpk and how TofuPilot tracks both.
- Quality & Process Control
What Is Cp (Potential Process Capability)
Cp measures how much of the spec window your process variation uses, ignoring centering. Learn the formula, how Cp relates to Cpk, and read it in TofuPilot.
