Bogart: This is in large part my mistake, my assembly process has not been very good, only the last few units I have assembled have been done properly, I was in too much of a hurry to get units out the door fast. If you send the broken units back I will refurbish them, I think most of the chips are still ok! I hope I can compensate you in some way.
That's good support. I appreciate that.
I'd like to move forward with diagnosing what's left and finding out what still works, but I'd really like to know the cause of the failure first so I don't repeat it.
Do you think it was the excess thermal compound conducting where it shouldn't, the large screw heads conducting where they shouldn't, or something else?