At 08:03 AM 3/8/99 PST, Bailin Ma wrote: >Hi Group, > >We have already seen awards for the most misleading ads, worst attire, >worst films, ..... >Why not awards for worst EMC and PS qualities? > >Barry Ma >Morgan Hill, CA 95037
Long ago in another company, I was completing the testing for a large rack mounted device, i.e. emissions, immunity, safety, some parts of Bellcore. We got a call from one of our customers complaining about how sensitive our equipment was and how susceptible it was to ESD events during their own testing of our equipment. This was deemed unacceptable by them. This decision of theirs jeopardized a sale of several million dollars. The finger was duly pointed by everyone right to yours truly. My head was literally in no uncertain terms put on the block. I contested producing repeatable and acceptable ESD test results that were BELOW the BER levels specified by Bellcore with ESD test levels ABOVE that specified by the test standard. I wanted as much margin as possible for our product. Well, it ended up that if you stood three to four feet in front of the rack and jingled change in your pocket or jangled a set of keys in front of it, the product would RESET. Jingling change in a ziplock bag produces very high levels of super fast transients up into the GHz range. Worse, slamming the metal door to the lab in which the equipment was setup would also reset the product. The lab door was say 20 or so feet from our equipment under test. It took six months of a redesign cycle to straighten out that one, but it was finally done. I always wanted to find out who in God's name could have come up with such an insidious ESD test by simply putting some change in a zip lock bag and jingling it in front of equipment. But, I figured "he", whoever he was, was lost in time. And wouldn't you know it? ... I now work for that man. --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
