Only this morning have I just tested a competitive product from a manufacturer in Germany, which failed miserably (+40dB) on conducted emissions testing and earth leakage, to be fair only 2mA, but the standard clearly states 1mA!.
As a designer/manufacturer myself this makes me really annoyed. I have spent countless hours iterating the design process to ensure compliance from the first engineering samples down to every unit rolling off the production line. My experience with UK trading standards ( I am in the UK!) was interesting. I mentioned in passing about non compliant products during his un-announced visit on me to "drop in and see how we are doing with compliance". He wasnt interested and the last time I checked the products were still on the market. So as with this product I have tested this morning, I'll just leave it until I next see them at a trade show and asked them if they have fixed it yet. As a manufacturer I am more concerned to supply products to specification (the usual stipulation in contract is conformity to relevant directives etc), because if we dont we get the equipment returned or we spend any profit on getting them right. So in a sense is compliance down to self regulation? How about as a consumer, buying a PC, then 6 months later (with no modifications) finds it is non-compliant (highly likeyl!!).. Can the consumer return it/demand correction/!?!? Enci I can live with a couple of dB failure that is in the minutia. What I am talking about is a signature that can be broad band in nature and having a class B product fail class A miserably. This is just a blatant disregard for the standards. Mark J. Kirincic [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: Stone, Richard A <mailto:[email protected]> (Richard) To: 'drcuthbert' <mailto:[email protected]> ; 'Mark Kirincic' <mailto:[email protected]> ; Stone, Richard A (Richard) <mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected] ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 10:03 AM Subject: RE: OK, what's going on? There has been an enormous amount of feedback >from Dereks email this week. Including mine. I am beginning to get the notion this is all brand new to most of the people here.. it isn't..........going on for years... were not going to change evolution, we can gripe and complain.... best thing to do is our own diligence on our product,..not censor someone elses... what do you do to the company that passes site A oats,then fails site B...go to site C?...best 2 out of 3? think bill gates would care if he sold PC's? and not just software...People who rely on word/excel and other programs would care less about failing by a few db. the FCC is in place.... they run it....we try our best.... Richard, -----Original Message----- From: drcuthbert [ mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 10:54 AM To: 'Mark Kirincic'; Stone, Richard A (Richard); [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: RE: OK, what's going on? What would NARTE say about certified EMC engineers and technicians signing off on equipment that does not make the grade? It would be great if everyone and every company handled the issue of EMC ethically. But since the world does not always work this way.......I favor the idea of a fine for every unit that is shipped from a lot that statistically fails. I.E. mandatory sampling (of boxed and shipped units) and only a certain percentage are allowed to fail, etc. Companies would then weigh the cost of compliance against the cost of non-compliance. Devils advocate speaking now: But from the viewpoint of economics this would of course add cost to every unit shipped. Is the additional manufacturing cost to the public offset by any savings due to lower emissions and lower susceptibility? Would society truly benefit from better EMC enforcement or does this serve only the EMC community? Dave Cuthbert Micron Technology
