EMC lab kit.

[David Chamberlain]

Was at a test house today. These places blow me away so much expensive kit. This test receiver is 20Hz to 40GHz - list price US$130K

[edit] They had a sad old Tectronics 500MHz 2GSPS four channel DSO gathering dust on the shelve with a blown channel 1. I was bold enough to offer my free disposal services, however they did not take me up on the offer. Was worth a try especially as they had a newer 1GHz version and admitted they never used DSO's normally.

[charliedelta]

Everything related to the EMC world is super expensive.  Antennas, probes CISPR documents  and test equipment are priced right  out of reach of most ordinary people and engineers.  Even more bizarre is the secrecy around the pricing of EMC test equipment. You will never find  an advertised price for any piece equipment all "POA" meaning dont ask because you cant afford it.

These days with the readily available SDR receivers that are available cheapily I am surprised that nobody has even offered a basic 9khz to 30mhz EMC receiver with calibrated EMC bandwidths and Quasi Peak dectectors.  Even as something like tunable  SDR receiver with  quasi peak would be useful as a pre-compliance tool.

Then lets look at the prices of current probes from Fischer and many other companies.  They are so expensive for such simple pieces of equipment. Most of my homemade RF current probes offer better S21 and transfer impedance  performance. Its a lump of ferrite  in a screened case, theres really no need for these to cost  a small fortune for what they really are. I have opened a number  and you would be shocked at the  crap thats inside them. Balsa wood, hot melt glue, 8 turns of teflon wire and a cast case. When i get some time I will post some pictures of the internals of the Fischer RF current probes.

The same goes for Rod and EMC loop antennas. The rods are classic example, they want thousands of dollars for battery operated J310 fet amplifier whose calibration can  calibrated quite easily with the capacitor substitution model. Same goes for the EMC loop. Even when you consider what the calibration fee would be at say NPL  for a home made 9khz to 30mhz loop, its total cost of a home made loop is substantially less than the commercial product. Horn antennas can be mass produced within  micron accuracy using laser cutting. There is no need to have such ridiculous prices for horn antennas and a calibration for every antenna produced. The EMC market is ripe for the Chinese entrepreneurs to enter and produced some reasonably priced equipment.

Then lets not talk about the ESD generators and their  targets that are such simple pieces of equipment.  How can anyone justify a copying a CISPR target  and selling it for 5000 dollars when its a 20 dollar piece of aluminum?  Then lets talk about the 20  dollar higher voltage generator! All documented with designs  in the standards!

So in many areas the EMC suppliers certainly know how to gouge you especially when most of the hard design work and consideration as been  formulated by people like the  CISPR people. Anyway, I could do most of my own certification using  calibrated equipment if the equipment and standards were more affordable.
End of my EMC equipment rant, maybe I am just too poor whining about every thing that  is probably the most expensive test equipment  that any person could buy. It makes Keithley  and Keysight test equipment look like a bargain!

Might be a good idea for a EMC section in this forum!

[KE5FX]

These days with the readily available SDR receivers that are available cheapily I am surprised that nobody has even offered a basic 9khz to 30mhz EMC receiver with calibrated EMC bandwidths and Quasi Peak dectectors.  Even as something like tunable  SDR receiver with  quasi peak would be useful as a pre-compliance tool.

Check out the various products from Signal Hound.