Perception under real conditions
Lighting drift, reflective enamel, occlusion, and product variants with no labelled data.
Illustrative · publishing begins with cohort one
Notes fromthe line,not the deck.
What we are learning building physical AI for appliance manufacturing — including the parts that did not work. Written by the engineers doing the work.
What we are writing
Outlines are real; the posts publish as the underlying work completes. Marked Illustrative until then.
Perception
Predicting foam voids without seeing inside the cabinet
Why direct observation is impossible after the jig closes, and what shot weight, mix ratio, jig temperature and cure timing actually tell you. Illustrative
EdgeLiving inside a 100-millisecond budget
How multi-camera fusion, model serving and control writes are scheduled so a station decision never misses takt. Illustrative
QualityMicro-leaks below the tester threshold
Pressure-decay curves contain more information than a pass/fail verdict. What the shape of the curve predicts. Illustrative
SafetyWhat an agent is allowed to write, and why
Designing bounded authority envelopes so autonomy is scoped, observable and instantly revocable. Illustrative
FieldThe first fourteen days of shadow mode
What a baseline actually looks like, why it is usually worse than the plant believes, and how to publish it honestly. Illustrative
ProductWhy we picked one industry
The case for vertical physical AI, and the specific things a horizontal platform structurally cannot learn. Illustrative
What we will and will not publish
Field notes exist to be useful to the process engineer who reads them, not to generate leads. That means the failure modes get published alongside the wins.
Where a note discusses design-partner work, the partner reviews it and identifying detail is removed. Where a number appears, so does its baseline and its window.
Editorial rules
- No claim without a baseline and a window
- No customer detail without written approval
- Failures published as readily as successes
- Written by engineers, not by a content agency
- Corrections published in place, not quietly deleted
The topics follow the build
Forming, welding, enamel, foaming, assembly, test and packing — each stage has its own physics, its own failure modes and its own notes.
Form & stampWeld & seamEnamel & paintFoam & insulateWire & assembleLeak & function testRate & pack
Browse by theme
Each theme maps to part of the platform.
Refrigeration
Cabinets are formed, foamed and charged — then judged by a leak test and an energy rating. Duromex links the foam shot and the seam to the number the tester prints.
- Foam density, distribution and void prediction per cabinet
- Refrigerant leak signature detection before charge-and-seal
- Energy-performance forecast from process conditions, not just test results
- Door seal and gasket compression verification
Laundry
Drums, cabinets and wiring harnesses at high volume. Balance, seal and electrical integrity decide whether a machine survives its warranty period.
- Drum and cabinet forming control with seam-quality scoring
- Water-leak detection at fill, drain and seal stations
- Harness routing, connector seating and polarity verification
- Vibration and spin functional-test triage
Dishwashing
Tub forming, insulation, pump and heater assembly, then a wet functional test that is expensive to repeat.
- Tub seam and weld integrity sensing
- Water-leak and overflow-path detection
- Pump, heater and sensor assembly verification
- Wet-test cycle-time and repeat-test reduction
Cooking
Enamel is the product. Coverage, film build, cure and chipping decide whether a range ships as first quality or a downgrade.
- Enamel coverage, film build and cure control
- Chip, pinhole and orange-peel detection
- Gas valve, igniter and element assembly verification
- IEC 60335 safety-test evidence capture
Air conditioning
Brazed joints, refrigerant charge and performance test under tightening F-gas rules — a leak here is a compliance event, not just a rework.
- Brazed-joint and coil leak detection
- Charge accuracy and refrigerant loss tracking
- Performance and capacity test triage
- F-gas and energy-regulation evidence trail
Publishing plan
Slow and specific beats fast and generic.
Cohort one
Baseline and shadow-mode notes
What we learn instrumenting real lines and measuring honest baselines.
- Shadow-mode findings
- Accuracy gaps published
Advisory phase
Attribution and correction notes
What engineer corrections teach the models, and where the models were confidently wrong.
- Correction taxonomies
- Confidence calibration
Control phase
Safety and authority notes
How scoped write authority behaved in production, including rollbacks.
- Authority envelope design
- Rollback post-mortems
Ongoing
Case studies
Full studies with partner approval, method and caveats.
- Metric, method, result
- Partner-reviewed
Recurring subjects
The things we keep coming back to.
Latency engineering
Scheduling, batching and serving decisions that keep station decisions inside takt.
Attribution
Tracing an end-of-line failure back to the upstream stage that caused it.
Autonomy safety
Bounded envelopes, fail-safe defaults, and what happens when the model is uncertain.
Simulation fidelity
How good a twin has to be before it is allowed to gate a production change.
Evidence and audit
Building assurance records that hold up in a regulatory or warranty dispute.
What readers tell us
“Our end-of-line functional testers told us what failed. They never told us which press stroke or foam shot caused it. That link is the whole product.”
“Foam voids are invisible until the energy rating comes back wrong. Predicting density distribution before the cabinet cures is the part I could not buy anywhere else.”
“If it writes to the press, it needs an audit trail a quality auditor accepts. Duromex started there instead of bolting it on.”
Our writing rules, quantified
1
topic per note
100%
notes with a stated method
0
notes without partner approval
0
AI-generated filler posts
Segments we write about
Refrigeration OEM · EU
Laundry OEM · North America
Cooking OEM · Turkey
Dishwashing OEM · Italy
Air-conditioning OEM · Asia
Tier-1 cabinet supplier
Design-partner programme, 2026. Duromex is pre-launch — partner identities are withheld under NDA and shown by segment, not by logo.
About this section
Why are all the posts marked Illustrative?
Because they are not written yet, and pretending otherwise would contradict the point of the page. The outlines are real.
Can we suggest a topic?
Yes. If you are a process, quality or OT engineer in appliance manufacturing and there is something you wish someone would write about properly, tell us.
Do you accept guest posts?
From design partners and practitioners, yes. From content agencies, no.
Get the notes when they publish.
No newsletter noise — one message when a note goes live.
Duromex is pre-launch. Figures shown are design-partner targets and modelled economics, not audited results. Ask us for the methodology.