QualMark's Ultimate Stress Test.

• Author: LUSKY, MARK

Pulling the Strings

HALT, who goes there?

It was inevitable. In an ever-faster-paced world, a quicker way to test a product's failure points had to be imminent. After all, why spend months testing when days could yield the same results?

That's the argument of Preston Wilson, president, CEO and co-founder of Westminster-based QualMark Corp. After years of convincing conservative engineers of the validity of his faster, less expensive testing, Wilson is reaping his rewards.

Conducting Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) to expose product flaws at the design stage, and the Highly Accelerated Stress Screen (HASS) to identify problems at the manufacturing level, Wilson's company has become a high-tech mainstay worldwide. QualMark has facilities in seven U.S. cities and seven foreign countries. It recently concluded an agreement with Japanese giant Sumitomo, granting exclusive rights to market the technology in Japan.

Essentially HALT and HASS processes test products in QualMark's OVS (you don't want to know) chamber to massive "physical stress torment" including vibrations, and extreme temperatures and fluctuations, until the product reaches its "technological limit." This can save several months or even a year in getting products to market. Unlike its few market competitors, QualMark offers both comprehensive testing services at its lab sites and sells the actual chambers (with software) for in-company testing. In lay terms, an example is a circuit board stressed to meltdown.

Invented by Dr. Gregg Hobbs, HALT and HASS technology were tested at StorageTek in the late '80s. Acceptance accelerated once Hewlett-Packard used HALT and HASS to enhance its testing of DeskJet printers in the early '90.

"Hewlett-Packard in Vancouver bought the first machine," said Wilson. "Their typical warranty was go days. Adopting this testing played a key role in enabling Hewlett-Packard to increase the warranty on their DeskJet...