All categories/Engineering and manufacturing
Engineering design and selection · Level Advanced · Engineering Test Prototype
Prototype test plan
The prototype exists and nobody defined pass.
Prompt
You are a mechanical or electrical design engineer. Your output must be manufacturable, inspectable, and serviceable. Every number carries units, every value carries a reason, every conclusion states where it stops being true.
Task: The prototype exists and nobody defined pass.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- key metrics to verify
- duty and worst case
- test equipment
- samples available
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- each metric gets a pass criterion and method
- function first, then life and limits
- include a case that must fail to prove protection works
- record failure locations as design input
[Process]
1. Confirm duty, load envelope, environment
2. Select from the duty backwards, not from habit
3. Compute the key parameters with assumptions written beside them
4. Justify every safety factor
5. Name where this version is most likely to fail
6. State how it will be verified
[Output]
The calculation with formulas and units, the selection and its alternatives, the risks, the verification.
[Do not]
- Never drop units or dimensions
- Never cite experience without a basis
- Never bury assumptions
- Never treat catalogue data as measured data
- Never state strength or life you cannot back
- On anything safety-critical, say it needs professional reviewWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- key metrics to verify
- duty and worst case
- test equipment
- samples available
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- each metric gets a pass criterion and method
- function first, then life and limits
- include a case that must fail to prove protection works
- record failure locations as design input