Things have improve immensely since the "bad old days". I vividly recall receiving a nasty shock as a child from my grandfather's a.c. power portable phonograph (about 1950 design). The head of a screw holding the metal chassis to the pressboard was easily touched or brushed against. My father had discovered that if the non-polarized plug was in the socket the wrong way around, the screw head got energized at 120V. That hurts!
Since those days, product safety standards have helped eliminate many of the hazards in consumer appliances, and they're getting better at it every year. _______________________________________________________________________________ Ralph McDiarmid | Schneider Electric | Solar Business | CANADA | Regulatory Compliance Engineering From: "Pettit, Ghery" <ghery.pet...@intel.com> To: EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG, Date: 12/07/2012 10:44 AM Subject: Re: [PSES] The Cost of Safety I had a similar experience years ago. Prototype power filter in a system that ran on 3 phase power. The tech who built up the filter forgot the bleeder resistors. I picked up the power cord sometime after the unit had been turned off and unplugged and got the pins of the plug across the palm of my hand. OUCH! Still showed over 100 Volts across the pins after that. Good caps in the filter. :-) We made sure the design included bleeder resistors after that. Ghery S. Pettit -----Original Message----- From: emc-p...@ieee.org [mailto:emc-p...@ieee.org] On Behalf Of Grasso, Charles Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 10:12 AM To: John Woodgate; EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG Subject: RE: [PSES] The Cost of Safety Years ago I had firsthand experience ( as a fledgling engineer) of a DIRECT financial impact on the company I worked for at the time due to a safety hazard in a fielded product. The product in question was an OEM PC. The company did all the due diligence with respect to the marking and safety reports to ensure compliance with the relevant standards. Regretfully - while moving said PC from one location to another- a customer got shocked by bare AC pins. The shock caused the customer to drop the PC and fall down some stairs. The ensuing publicity caused a significant impact on our sales and fundamentally we never recovered to be a serious player in the PC business after that. Analysis showed that the OEM manufacturer left out a small component - the bleed resistor across the filter caps - with massive results. Best Regards Charles Grasso Compliance Engineer Echostar Communications (w) 303-706-5467 (c) 303-204-2974 (t) 3032042...@vtext.com (e) charles.gra...@echostar.com (e2) chasgra...@gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: emc-p...@ieee.org [mailto:emc-p...@ieee.org] On Behalf Of John Woodgate Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 9:13 AM To: EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG Subject: Re: [PSES] The Cost of Safety In message <000c01cdd486$cdf05bc0$69d11340$@ieee.org>, dated Fri, 7 Dec 2012, Jack Burns <jbu...@ieee.org> writes: >Should the added cost of the safety features be considered a marketing >or legal expense? Well, either, because generally for those budgets USD50000 is a trifle, whereas it's half the annual R&D budget.(;-) >Also, I have had marketing try to dictate a less safe product because >they wanted it cheaper, or didn?t want all those distracting labels, or >didn?t want those ugly warnings in their pretty manuals, or worse, >didn?t want to imply that there were any hazards with the product. I've used that 'Do you have so many customers that you can afford to kill a few?' response to that. It doesn't make one popular but it gets the point over. -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. See www.jmwa.demon.co.uk The longer it takes to make a point, the more obtuse it proves to be. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ 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 <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com> - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ 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 <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com> - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ 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 <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com> ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. ______________________________________________________________________ - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ 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 <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
