There are two different goals that you can achieve. If you are aiming to make sure that your product is reasonably immune to ESD, the exact size of the coupling plane may not matter. You can do reasonable testing to make sure that your product meets the intent of the standard and your customers' expectations.
If you are looking to meet the standard, you have to follow it closely. The advantage is that you will get results that are easier to repeat when done by a different test facility. If somebody else tries to test your product to the standard, there is a better chance of them getting the same results with the standardized tests. There are plenty of engineers who can adapt the standard to better fit products that don't quite fit within the parameters set out in the standards. However, there are also plenty of people who will perform inferior testing if allowed to adapt the standard. For those people, we must have the precise requirements. In my opinion, you can justify the differences in you test method and show that you meet the essential requirements of the directive, you can change the test setup. You may need a TCF instead of going with the simple standards route. You may also need to perform some correlation between the different HCP sizes. Larger or smaller planes will work differently. The ESD levels may need to be adjusted to create an equivalent transient event. Ted Eckert American Power Conversion/MGE http://www.apc.com/ The items contained in this e-mail reflect the personal opinions of the writer and are only provided for the assistance of the reader. The writer is not speaking in an official capacity for APC-MGE or Schneider Electric. The speaker does not represent APC-MGE's or Schneider Electric's official position on any matter. "Kunde, Brian" <brian_kunde@leco tc.com> To Sent by: "Grace Lin" <[email protected]>, [email protected] <[email protected]> cc 10/15/2007 01:40 Subject PM RE: Size of HCP per ESD We are in the same boat as you. Our products will not fit on a 1.6x.8 table, not even two tables. So we use the other setup configuration called out in the standard; for floor mounted equipment. Setup and test your product as if it was floor mounted. The HCP can be as large as needed and who's to say that is can't be on top of a table? Just make sure it is grounded well. Set your EUT on 100mm insulating platform just like you would for Conducted Immunity. I understand this setup is under consideration for the IEC 61000-4-2 standard anyway. Just document your setup in your test report. Comments for or against? The Other Brian. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grace Lin Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 12:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Size of HCP per ESD Dear members, Could you please share your experience/comments in regard to the 1.6 m x 0.8 m size of horizonal coupling plane (HCP) per 61000-4-2? Need it to be the exact size of 1.6 m x 0.8 m? I would like to have a working bench works for both 61000-4-2 ESD and 61000-4-4 EFT/Burst tests. With the size of 1.6 m x 0.8 m, I may have a difficulty to place a generator, a capacitive coupling plane, and an EUT on the table. It would be great if I have 4' x 8' ground reference plane on top of the table. However, 61000-4-2 seems critical for the size of HCP: "If the EUT is too large to be located 0.1m minimum from all sides of the HCP, an additional, identical HCP shall be used, placed 0.3 m from the first, with the short sides adjacent." The 61000-4-2 standard doesn't give me a choice to enlarge the HCP. Thank you and look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, Grace Lin Sr. Compliance Engineer Crestron Electronics, Inc. New Jersey, USA www.crestron.com - ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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/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: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc _________________________ LECO Corporation Notice: This communication may contain confidential information intended for the named recipient(s) only. If you received this by mistake, please destroy it and notify us of the error. Thank you. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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/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: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [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/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: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc ______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned by MCI Managed Email Content Service, using Skeptic(tm) technology powered by MessageLabs. For more information on MCI's Managed Email Content Service, visit http://www.mci.com. ______________________________________________________________________
