wiki / bench-failure-log
Bench failure log
Every failure that cost more than an hour gets an entry. Reading other people's failure logs has saved me more money than any tutorial; this is me paying that forward.
2026-06 — the LDO footprint incident
Swapped a regulator mid-design, updated the schematic, didn't update the footprint. Five boards arrived with a dead-short power stage.
- Cost: $14 and a week
- Fix: footprint review is now a separate checklist pass — see Budget PCB workflow
2026-03 — the static-config rebuild
A drive died and took a hand-configured service with it. Nothing was in git. Rebuild took a weekend instead of an afternoon.
- Cost: one weekend, some pride
- Fix: the one rule in Homelab network map
Why publish this
Clients sometimes ask why my quotes include contingency. This page is the answer: real builds hit real snags, and pricing that honestly is kinder than pretending otherwise.