Low Voltage Directive (LVD).jpgThis post is by Chris Rouse, Safety Product Manager, TRaC

For all those using EN 60950-1 as a means for demonstrating compliance with either the R&TTE or LVD, now might be a good time to check you are up to date!

In December this year, EN 60950-1:2001/A11:2004 will be withdrawn, and EN 60950-1:2006 has also been updated to A1:2010. Although this change may seem technical, it can have a real impact on products tested to the old standard.

This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC

Over recent years there have been a number of instances where the safety of electrical products has been comprised by EMC phenomena. Toasters are often used as an example: in the past when a toaster was "off", it really was off, but nowadays toasters are microprocessor-based, creating the possibility of a transient on the mains power supply initiating a toasting cycle which could present a serious fire risk.

There a two thought processes of how to integrate EMC testing into a safety assessment.

This post is by Chris Stone, Environmental Test Manager, TRaC

The number of companies contacting me to enquire about Earthquake Testing has increased this year. Although most of the work is related to increased activity at the Nuclear Power Generating sites - such as the developments at Sellafield - I've also seen an increase in the number of enquiries from UK companies supplying overseas.

Earthquake Qualification Testing often causes consternation for the equipment suppliers who may be familiar with Vibration Testing, but often have little or no experience of the Earthquake Testing.

The process, however, is pretty straightforward if you follow these four steps:

Is the UK really sharpening its teeth regarding CE Marking Enforcement? asks Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC
 
The UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has recently started a consultation on how it will implement the New Legislative Framework into UK law.

One of the aims of this directive is to change the law such that enforcement action can be taken against those who do not comply with the rules. In principle, this is a great step forward, however, it will be completely wasted if no additional resource is put into enforcing the regulations. 

This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC
 
The UL and MET marks both indicate that the product has met the minimum requirements of the applicable [USA] safety standards.

Additionally, both marks validate the product's continued compliance to these standards as evidenced by periodic factory follow-up inspections. 







Is the military environment sufficiently different to commercial to warrant separate standards? This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC
 
Keeping up to date with standards and regulations is a challenge for a test lab, yet it must be a complete nightmare for a manufacturer who dips in and out of this world when the need arises.

It's made even more complicated in the defence world since products have to comply with defence standards to meet contractual obligations and CE marking for legislative purposes, which adds to the distraction from the real work. In the case of EMC, there are so many standards it begs the question, are they all necessary?

DES 2010.jpgThis post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC

It's over 40 years since Canned Heat sang "Let's Work Together", but this simple idea still proves difficult in practice. Even the application of CE marking can be inconsistent when you apply it to challenging applications such as military equipment.

Although military applications have their own standards, commercial standards are often applied when compliance to CE marking directives needs to be demonstrated.

This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC

Keeping up to date with standards in any industry is a challenge but the EMC industry doesn't help itself with so many standards all covering essentially the same thing.

There are at least six common emissions standards based on international CISPR standards covering household, industrial, information technology, lighting and broadcast receiver products. In addition to these basic standards there are industry specific standards which make reference to the basic ones, resulting in 30-40 possible standards that a manufacturer can choose from.

Post 23 image x275.JPGThis post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC

There has been a flurry of activity from lawyers in recent months understanding the rules of CE Marking, as defence manufacturers get to grips with having to comply with CE Marking legislation.

This activity has been partly created by the EMC Directive (2004/104/EC) which came into force last July; the previous version of the Directive (89/336/EC) gave a specific exemption for 'defence material', whereas the current one doesn't.

This post is by Joe Lomako, Telecoms & Radio Business Development Manager, TRaC
 
RF technology is now being found in all manner of devices. One of the industries that's seeing an increased interest is the medical industry with radio devices being incorporated into a wide spectrum of devices from heart rate monitors and blood pressure meters to weighing scales. There is even a bed occupancy monitor!

These are all very important applications which make patient monitoring much more efficient and cost effective, particularly in an ageing population. ZigBee and Bluetooth technology are increasingly being recognised as premium technologies for these types of application. 







This post is by Chris Stone, Environmental Test Manager, at TRaC.

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about earthquake testing, which generated some interesting correspondence. Many people wanted to know a little more about the kinds of products that I've tested and their application.

Well, we've carried out work for a range of companies, across a broad spectrum of industries, although most of the products are characterised by a very high cost of failure - either because lives would be put at risk, there are heavy financial penalties for downtime, or repair would be expensive.

This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, at TRaC.

Many of our customers are choosing to conduct pre-compliance EMC testing throughout the design stage.

Here are seven reasons why it's a good idea:
This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, at TRaC.

All electronics engineers are familiar with EMC testing, generally viewing it as yet another challenge to be overcome by good design.

However, it's not just small electronic products that are affected: EMC is becoming an increasingly important element of large infrastructure projects.

In industries such as transportation infrastructure and power generation, the equipment can be physically large, the regulations stringent and the cost of failure pretty terrifying.

This post is by Joe Lomako, Telecoms & Radio Business Development Manager at TRaC.

There is a huge drive to improve energy efficiency from customers wishing to save on running costs, manufacturers trying to gain competitive advantage and also from governments.

The number of international energy efficiency standards is growing requiring manufacturers to not only think about efficiency during design, but also ensure that appropriate certifications are obtained.

Although regulation and encouragement of energy efficiency by governments dates back many years, with the American Energy Star initiative being probably the best known, new regulation is flooding onto the market.

Airbus A380.jpgIan Scotney, Environmental Deputy Test Manager, at TRaC.

The news is full of stories about the significant disruption to air traffic in Northern Europe due to the volcanic eruption in the south west part of Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull glacier.

Aircraft are not permitted to fly into volcanic ash clouds because there is a risk of damage to aircraft components and systems by:
  • Abrading forward facing surfaces including cockpit windows, control surfaces, wing leading edges. Cockpit windows can be pitted enough to cause significant hazards during landing.
  • Causing engine failure due to accumulations forming on the turbine blades caused by fusing of the silica particles at around 1100 OC.
  • Coating the plane enough to cause it to become tail heavy.
  • Penetrating the aircraft, contaminating the passenger compartment and affecting the aircraft's internal systems.






This post is by Mike Gaukroger, Principal Approvals Engineer at TRaC.

Many countries have their own specific requirements for certification of products, but don't always have the infrastructure to test to these standards. This presents a problem - how can you get certified if no one in the country can test your product?

One example is Brazil, where telecommunication equipment is subject to Anatel (Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes) certification in Brazil. These regulations state that telecommunication products should be tested by a suitable Brazilian third party test laboratory, but the services offered by these laboratories are limited.

This post is by Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director at TRaC.
 
CISPR 11, the product specific emission standard for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment has recently been revised and reissued as Edition 5.0.

In this process clarification has been provided regarding the scope of the standard.
man in sewer 150.jpgThis post is by Simon Barrowcliff BEng CEng MIET MBA, ATEX Director at TRaC.

It's surprising how many products need Ex certification because they operate in hazardous or potentially explosive atmospheres. Thanks to the IECEx website for this list of 14 environments where Ex certification may be needed:
This post is by Simon Barrowcliff BEng CEng MIET MBA, ATEX Director at TRaC

Many companies develop products that need to operate in explosive atmospheres - areas where flammable liquids, vapors, gases or combustible dusts are likely to occur in quantities sufficient to cause a fire or explosion.

Increased industrial automation means that more electronic products operate in such environments, therefore requiring certification to ensure that they will not cause an explosion during normal operation.

This post is by Stuart Brown, Environmental Managing Director at TRaC. It is the second of a series about accelerated life testing - you might want to check out the first article about HALT and the second article about HASS as well.

ESS (Environmental Stress Screening)


ESS is a generic term for a production screening process using one or more environmental stresses in order to precipitate latent, manufacturing-induced defects.

Different definitions of ESS exist. Some are derived from product specifications and worst-case operating conditions. Others are developed, often quite arbitrarily, by organisations, then applied universally to everything they manufacture.







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Author Profiles

Jonathan Harros, ZigBee Business Manager, TRaC
Jonathan Harros, ZigBee Business Manager, TRaCAfter obtaining his Bachelor's degree in engineering, Jonathan worked for a number of engineering companies prior to obtaining a teaching role at the University of Hull (England). In 1995 he joined KTL, an internationally renowned test laboratory which then became TRaC, as part of the Digital Group specialising in regulatory requirements for digital telecommunications equipment. During his time at the company he has, among other things, been appointed as Senior Protocol Engineer, and Approvals and Homologation Group Manager. Jonathan has actively participated in various technical working groups for the ZigBee Allianceâ and is currently the ZigBee Qualification Group (ZQG) Lead Technical Editor.

Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaC
Steve Hayes, EMC & Safety Managing Director, TRaCSteve is Managing Director for the EMC and Safety business of TRaC and has been involved in EMC and product approvals for 19 years. In addition to the day to day running of the business, Steve is actively involved in EMC standardisation both in commercial and defence areas. In addition to being the UK Principal expert on EMC standardisation of Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) products he is also the convenor of CISPR/B/WG1 who has the responsibility of writing the International standard, CISPR 11. Steve wrote the CE marking annex to the UK's defence EMC standard as well as being co-convenor of CENELEC TC210/WG9, responsible for writing a guide on approval of military systems with commercial (CE Marking) requirements.

Joe Lomako, Telecoms & Radio Business Development Manager, TRaC
Joe Lomako, Telecoms & Radio Business Development Manager, TRaCJoe Lomako MSc is the Business Development Manager of Telecoms and Radio at TRaC. He has been involved in the testing and compliance industry for over 15 years. Prior to joining TRaC Joe specialised in EMC, EMF Exposure and Radio compliance.

Chris Stone, Test Manager TRaC Environmental & Analysis
Chris Stone, Test Manager TRaC Environmental & AnalysisAppointed Test Manager in 2007, following three years as Projects Manager at TRaC, having previously worked as Head of Environmental Testing at another UKAS accredited test house. Over 20 years' experience of modelling, testing and measurement in the structural dynamics and seismic fields.

Chris Rouse, Safety Product Manager, TRaC
Chris Rouse, Safety Product Manager, TRaCChris has worked in electrical safety compliance for over 17 years. Having previously worked for BSI, he joined TRaC in 1996, progressing through a number of testing roles before becoming Safety Product Manager in 2006.

Graham Andrews, Analysis Commercial Manager, TRaC
Graham Andrews, Analysis Commercial Manager, TRaCAppointed Commercial Manager - Analysis in November 2009. Prior to joining TRaC, he was the Business Development Manager at Onward Technologies, an engineering services company based in India. Graham has spent over 20 years working in the CAD / CAE domain selling both engineering services and engineering systems.

Stephen Tait, Senior Telecoms Engineer, TRaC
Stephen Tait, Senior Telecoms Engineer, TRaCStephen Tait joined KTL, an internationally renowned test laboratory which then became TRaC, as part of the Telecom Group specialising in telecommunications product testing for worldwide approvals. Stephen is also responsible for the Telecoms commercial activities within the TRaC group.

Simon Barrowcliff BEng CEng MIET MBA, ATEX Director
Simon Barrowcliff BEng CEng MIET MBA, ATEX DirectorSimon Barrowcliff is the Director of the ATEX Notified Body at TRaC. He set up TRaC's Lancashire-based, ATEX business in 2002 and has been heavily involved in EX testing and compliance since then. Simon also runs TRaC's certification schemes for electrical safety under the IECEE CB scheme. He is a chartered electrical engineer with more than 20 years experience of product compliance for electrical and mechanical equipment.

Stuart Brown, Environmental Managing Director
Stuart Brown, Environmental Managing DirectorAppointed Managing Director in November 2007. Previously he was Test Facilities Manager for Flight Refuelling, part of the Cobham group, and spent his early career in the Environmental Engineering Department of British Aerospace at Stevenage.

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