Widlerizing

[Andrew W. Macfadyen]

I recently had a case in reverse, I built a 2 rail voltage regulator and
negative supply generator, it worked fine when I tested it on battery but when
I connected to a mains adapter I forgot to allow for the peak ripple  --- the
7660 negative supply generator chip literally blew up ! with one hell of a
crack.

Mike Turner wrote:

> Bob Pease in a recent issue of Electronic Design relates the Widlerizing
> much better than I can but the gist was that Bob would take a failed
> component that had caused him unusual grief to a vise, place the offending
> component on the anvil part, and proceed to reduce it to very very very
> small fragments using the proverbial pi pound hammer. This provided him
> both some sense of retribution and assurance that that particular component
> could never appear again to plague his designs. I will admit that this has
> worked for me personally and that failure to Widlerize or throw away a bad
> part almost guarantees its resurrection at some inopportune future date.
> Unfortunately, universal application of Widlerizing to all offending
> components in my universe seems to be frowned upon by the authorities.