Jim, It depends on the type of room that you are moving and what you have more of, time or $$.
We have been under time constraints so we hired the job out for both the basic shield room and the semi-anechoic room. The basic shield room was done in roughly a day for a relatively low cost, (couple $k??). The semi-anechoic room was challenging to bring into compliance for the uniform field during the initial installation with the vendor installing it; I wasn't about to enter an unknown and have no recourse. We had the vendor move and upgraded the chamber at the same time. It was ~60% of the cost of the chamber new (10s of $k), and took quite awhile to re-establish compliance. This was a ferrite line with cone over-laid absorption material 3m chamber. The older chambers with all cone material are perhaps more costly to move due to the size of the chamber to house the long cone material. I understand IBM spent 100's of $k to move their 10m cone chambers from Boca to RTP. And they left one behind... I'll let them comment on those details. There is a little more technique involved when moving the anechoic chambers, but a shield room shouldn't be nearly as challenging as long as you only need basic shielding. The chambers are typically spec'd at 110dB over a certain frequency range, but if you are not doing TEMPEST work, that's really overkill for most applications. An RF budget will tell you what you can tolerate. If your requirements aren't that stringent, you might not need much wool and tape. Don Umbdenstock Manager Compliance Engineering Tyco Safety Products / Sensormatic 6600 Congress Avenue Boca Raton, FL 33487 USA 561.912.6440 [email protected] From: Bob Richards [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 10:02 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Moving EMI equipment Jim, I have moved a couple of shielded rooms, and except for removing the top panels, I was able to do it all by myself. A sheetrock jack would have helped. Number all the panels, marking all the pieces to allow everything to go back in the same location. On reassembly, use steel-wool or scotch pads to clean the edges of the panels. Chamber performance can be verified, but you will need the equipment to do so, such as a signal source, spectrum analyzer, antenna pair, amplifier, etc. up to the highest frequency of interest. IMHO, start at 1 GHz and use horn antennas, since their directionality will make it easier to pinpoint leaks. Have plenty of copper tape and bronze wool on hand to repair leaks. Anechoic chambers can be a very different beast! Depending on how they are constructed, I would probably not want to tackle one. A compact chamber might be ok, but I have seen some where the tiles and cones were glued on the walls after construction, they would have to be broken off and replaced later. With the other tiles still on the panels, I imagine the weight of a panel would be extreme. Good luck! Bob Richards --- "Collum, James (CoEv Reno)" <[email protected]> wrote: > I need to move a shielded room and 3M emissions > measuring equipment > between two buildings. > > Over the years I have seen postings here for > "chamber for free, come and > get it" or similar and was wondering how the pricing > of a move affected > the decision. > Could anyone who has done something like this in the > past tell me.... > 1) Did you use a specialist company to > dismantle/reassemble and verify > seals etc or did you do it yourself? > 2) Any recommendations on specifying electrical > requirements in the > proposed new location. > 3) Have you ever left the room behind and just > purchased new again, if > so why, Cost? Previous attempts to relocate proved > problematic? A good > excuse to upgrade? > > Any recommendations or advice would be appreciated > > Jim This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
