Story. This happened 20+ years ago so don't shoot me.
An outside vendor was supplying the Operator Interface Console for our new Ultrasound machine. This console was a slick EMC design, each of the 11 or more rotary encoders that used low power CPU's that went to sleep after rotation. I was told the PIC chips were parasitic powered to reduce EMC. Wow, nice considering diagnostic Ultrasound was essentially a multi channel sub-microvolt receiver with a piezoelectric transducer as the patient antenna. The new machine was failing RE on the 10m OATS and the operator interface console EMC Engineer came to visit us to see why. "How good are your 360 degree shielded connectors?" "We don't know." The EMC Engineer then looks at us and says some to the effect, "Oh goody, this is the part I like the most." He whips out his pocket knife and starts pealing off the hard plastic over-molded connector... The project engineer and myself looks at each other with our mouths hanging open while the connector was being dissected - and then the EMC guy cuts himself. I felt bad for him, he was a "sharp" EMC engineer and he did find the problem. Moral to this story - Don't cut yourself! Dave Garnier - Retired GEHC Dave Garnier - Retired GEHC - ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <sdoug...@ieee.org> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
