When I set out to create and sell my STARLIGHT model rocketry flight computers, I wanted to be sure that what I sold to customers would be high-quality and be a good value for the price. One important piece of that is the QA process, along with good customer support. As a small business owner, these are incredibly important elements of success, and there are no shortcuts.
The average return rate for consumer electronics in the US ranges from 3% to 15%, according to recent statistics. I’m proud to say that in the 14 months since I began selling my flight computers, my defect rate has been much lower, and only 1 product has come back due to a defect out of over 100 sold.
Even more exciting, I recently heard from Yug Shukla, a student on the Polaris rocketry team. They’re using Starlight boards in a rocket that will be shot into space, which I covered in a previous 2-part blog post. He shared an update with me that “The Starlight units have accumulated over 80 flights and are now on the final flight software version”. Great news!
I think the reason for these strong results comes down to a detailed QA process.
Obviously in the design and manufacturing of PCBs, there are many considerations that affect product quality, and I’ve covered those in a previous post. But there’s more to the QA story than just manufacturing.
What’s my quality assurance process?
I place orders of 20-25 boards at a time, to keep a stable inventory on hand without the risk of being stuck with 100+ boards at any given time (my wallet as a 17-year-old cannot handle that, haha). As soon as the boards arrive, I plug each one in and flash a piece of firmware that runs basic tests on the board – can the pressure and temperature sensors be communicated with? Does the IMU give accurate data? Does calibration work fine? Does the level shifter do its job? Do the GPIO pins work? I also manually perform a visual inspection on every single board to make sure no traces look cut, and no manufacturer defects are present.
Then, I individually package the boards and store them in ESD-safe bags. As soon as an order is placed, I determine whether the headers need to be soldered or not. If so, I’ll manually solder the headers onto the board, a process that takes about half an hour per board. Once this is done, I’ll perform another visual inspection to make sure the solder joints look okay, and the pins are all placed correctly. Then I’ll reseal the bag and prepare it for shipping.
In addition to the QA process, customer support is a must-have for any electronics product. I have my Circuit Wizardry e-mail [email protected] directly connected to my phone notifications – every single time I receive an email it shows up as a time-sensitive notification on my phone. Typically, I respond within the hour, unless I’m asleep. This is an integral part of running a small business, as good customer support is incredibly important for trust and credibility.
Conclusion
There’s a reason my defect return rate is so low – I make sure each and every board I ship out works well and does what it’s advertised to do. This process of manually QAing and hand-soldering each board goes a long way to making sure my products are of high quality and work on arrival. Each boards takes me about 45 minutes to QA overall. While I could cut corners to get this number down, I’m dedicated to quality and customer support. My goal is to make sure I can provide the absolute best products for the price.
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