Lesson 22

Card 2.7: Connection Autopsy (Failure Modes)

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Format: Forensic teardown

Time: 40 min

Prerequisites: Cards 2.3, 2.6

Core Question

The studio keeps a box of dead things: flooded splices, corroded connectors, stripped servos, cracked potting. Every one failed for a reason. Can you read the reason out of the corpse?

Resource (~10 min)

Failure vocabulary: water intrusion, corrosion, fatigue, strain failure, cold joint, insulation damage, wrong-part-for-the-job. One worked example: the teacher autopsies one failed part aloud, evidence first, conclusion last.

Activity

In pairs, draw a failed part from the box. Produce a one-page failure report: photos or sketch, observed evidence, most likely failure mode, the chain of events that got there, and one specific change to design or process that would have prevented it. Evidence before conclusion; “it broke” is not a finding.

Clearing This Card

The failure report, plus a 90-second oral check where you defend your prevention recommendation against one challenge (“would that survive the pull test? the budget?”).

If You Miss This Class

The box is always there. Draw a part during studio time, same report and check.

Why This Matters

Failure analysis is the highest-value habit in engineering and the natural follow-up to any bad pool day. These reports feed DDRs directly: “we chose X because the autopsy of last year’s Y showed Z” is a judge-ready sentence.