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Of course I don't know the whole story, but the problem, in my view, is
that you're letting your vendors write the spec's when what they
_should_ be doing is building stuff that meets the spec's _you've_
written.
Well, that worked when I was doing this for
&hughmultinationalwithdeeppocketsandmuchpurchasingclout, not so much
for a small company. However, in this case the specs pretty much are
in our control or at least we approve of any changes. It is a
"custom" part for our application. However, this is a really
manufacturing issue, sot so much as a spec issue. They claim that the
current construction was RoHS compatible when it seems it has problems
with the high temperatures that RoHS requires. BTW, this isn't
unusual for passive components - caps are another problem area.
Kind of like the tail wagging the dog.
Not really.
As for modifying them to meet your needs, it sounds to me like what's
going on is: "That didn't work? OK we'll try something else."
Well, that's really what I'm afraid of. OTOH, the risk is really
manufacturing pain until they can correct the problem. We have a
screen that'll catch 100% of the failing devices. Getting the screen
into ICT will take a little more time.
I'm not sure there is a different approach than "try something else"
an this point. They can't seem to duplicate the problem. We sent 200
back to them for a heat/test cycle. Of the 200 we had 10 fail after
reflow. These had shorted windings (melted insulation). It's clear,
at least to them, that it's an insulation problem, which *should* be
solved by better insulation (and they've agreed to eat the cost).
