EEVblog® Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: Jester on March 25, 2019, 01:40:10 pm
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In some cases when making a trip to the compliance lab for a pre-scan, the device is marginal or fails slightly and a little tweak is all that is needed to get below the line. The compliance lab I usually use, keep a decent selection of clamp filters etc. I also have a little kit; copper tape, common mode chokes, clamp filters, etc.
What other goodies do you bring along when heading to the compliance lab?
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Not a direct answer to your question, but another option worth a mention ...
Rather than using a Compliance Lab for first look and remedial testing/dev, find a specialist in pre-comp testing close to you with a product design skill set as well as thorough EMC testing knowledge.
I've offered such services, emissions and immunity, since the start of the EU EMC Directive in the mid 90's. Such a specialist should have all the support hardware, components and expertise to guide your EMC remedial work down the right path in terms of cost effective solutions.
Compliance labs, even the good ones with remedial support, will often take much, much longer to arrive at solutions than a EMC pre-comp specialist. The difference in time to solution and hour rate typically results in (better) outcomes at a quarter of the cost. For high volume products where unit cost is critical such a specialist is indispensable, although many manufacturers will have the resources in house.
An important issue in pre-comp testing is how well the results correlate with a full compliance tests. Whilst I would encourage anyone to start on the learning curve, there is no magic bullet here and years of experience count. Carrying out accurate quick look see tests in one tenth of the time compared to systematic compliance lab procedures can be achieved but comes with experience.
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I do a pre-pre-scan here, I have SA, LISN's, NF probes etc. Usually the conducted aspect mirrors the lab fairly closely, radiated is another story. Good point though, there is a semi-retired expert near by, I should at least give him a try next time I have "issues"