It was a fun learning experience coupled with a few headaches here and there.
Having the luxury of an in-house 3m chamber and a decent assortment of EMC test equipment was absolutely indispensable for developing EMC compliant switch-mode power conversion products for both N.Am and the EU. Ralph From: James Hulbert <[email protected]> Sent: February 24, 2026 6:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PSES] Test Equipment for EMF Testing "Set up something in an empty parking lot.." brings back memories! There was a lot of creativity in the early days of FCC Part 15 testing. Jim Hulbert From: Ralph McDiarmid <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, February 23, 2026 6:19 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PSES] Test Equipment for EMF Testing This message is from an EXTERNAL EMAIL system. Use caution and think before opening attachments, clicking links, or responding. As usual, those are wonderful suggestions from John Woodgate. Take is sage advice. Brian, from my experience in such matters, establishing a useful EMC test setup with equipment and a shield room or an open-area test site, is an expensive endeavour with many trade-offs to ponder and carefully weigh. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around repeatable, pre-compliance, in-house EMC testing for radiated and conducted emissions. You might be able to setup something on an empty parking lot and do radiated emissions that way as a quasi-OATS but to make it worthwhile, you need a calibrated baseline to start the process. That means sending your prototype off to a lab, preferably within your country, get it scanned there, bring it back and scan it with your setup. With that, you'll have something somewhat meaningful to compare against toward a qualitative EMC measurement as you tweak the prototype. Same prototype sample, close as possible to same setup at the EMC lab. A 3-meter semi-anechoic shielded room is the gold standard for in-house EMC tests including nearfield EMF, but that is a big capital investment most companies cannot justify. The path to EMC compliance is often a long and winding road with tolls to be paid periodically. There are no apparent short cuts, at least none I could find in 20 years doing that work as a member of various development teams in medium and large companies in the power electronics industry. Ralph (Vancouver) (retired-thankfully) From: John Woodgate <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: February 23, 2026 8:34 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PSES] Test Equipment for EMF Testing Re limits, the international standards are produced by IEC TC106, and you can see a list at: https://iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:22:11802229485423::::FSP_ORG_ID,FSP_LANG_ID:1 303,25 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:22:11802229485423 ::::FSP_ORG_ID,FSP_LANG_ID:1303,25__;!!GXa4NB5MBjHR!VME66PUvMO38kWTppxXgGpdV rCsmagtJZt1ZlZQeUD48g-K1zbHBMr9nyU5C3H2Z2o5HgiqXCR5oR6VoNMUtkzM88oA$> However, IEEE standards are often different, and I can't steer you to them. Also, very few standards set limits at close proximity, because the measurements are difficult to make repeatably. To find an expert, you could try to contact the TAG for IEC TC106 through ANSI. On 2026-02-23 16:14, Brian Kunde wrote: I am looking to purchase the test equipment necessary to test Radiated Electromagnetic and Magnetic Field (EMF) between 100Khz and 30Mhz at very close distances to the product. Our goal is to buy something economical to quick-check a couple products we make, so we are looking for a way to measure these measurements without breaking the bank. Any suggestions. Also, are there any experts in EMF testing that would be willing to answer a few questions regarding limits? I have read through the ICNIRP guides and found them to be very difficult to understand; especially in the 100kHz to 300Ghz document. On occasion, we get test reports from field evaluations and the limits they use does not seem to line up with anything I have found so far. If there are good online references I have yet to find and read, that would be helpful, too. Thanks to all. 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