Conformity Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 52)

• Emissions test sites—open area or anechoic • Available power, type and quantity (available voltages, phases, and power capability) • Equipment handling: Loading facilities, maximum size and weight limitations • Degree of support equipment, fixturing, and cabling prebuilt and in place • Variety of standards supported If you have multi-rack systems, you need to work with laboratories that can ship and receive them properly, not to mention having large enough test sites equipped with heavy duty mechanized turntables. On the other hand, if your equipment is modest in size, a simple manual turntable will be adequate and in fact easier to use. For large systems, or systems running from unusual power combinations of phasing, frequency and voltage, you should inquire as to the laboratory’s power facilities. Almost anything can be powered with rented generators, but this will involve extra cost. Personnel and Communications A key issue in working with a laboratory is service. Three aspects of service you should consider are the amount of technical expertise available, the responsiveness of the lab’s personnel, and its IT interface to the client. If all goes well, the lab will test, report, and, if it is required for your product, certify. What if the unit fails to meet the test requirements? Some labs will provide on-site consulting, or have referral arrangements with consultants who can help. This may be of value to you. You may also wish some pre-test review, possibly early in the design process, of the equipment to spot potential problem areas. Whether the laboratory you work with provides this, you provide it in-house, or you contract for it separately, is up to you. It is a good idea, however, to plan in advance where you will look for help if you require it. Bear in mind that diagnostic testing may involve additional charges which are not fully predictable. Sometimes product modifications are minor and can easily be incorporated; on occasion this is not the case, and retesting will be necessary after the modifications are introduced into your unit. Communication with the sales and lab staff is important. Up front, you want to have confidence that you and the lab have correctly assessed your product’s compliance needs for the markets you are targeting. Once the project starts, you want progress reports on scheduling, test results, and the progress of your reports. Accuracy and predictability are what you need in order to meet your schedules. A client interface to the lab’s IT system can make life easier. Some laboratories offer an electronic updating service where schedules, test results, and reports can be easily found. Working with the Lab Once you’ve selected a laboratory to work with, you are beginning a professional relationship where vendee (that’s you, the client) and vendor (the lab) have complementary goals. You both want a mutually beneficial relationship. The client wants efficient service; and the laboratory wants to provide it in order to please the client and cement the relationship. This requires work on both sides. In order for the laboratory to perform efficiently, it needs product support and documentation support from the client. Testing requires an adequately supported product in terms of hardware and software. It isn’t sufficient to just drop off the equipment at the lab door; it has to be properly configured. Many tests require that the product be operational. For emissions tests, it is usually necessary to have realistic software and hardware in place so that worst-case emissions may be measured. The software doesn’t have to be a full production release, but it has to exercise all significant functionality of the equipment under test. Immunity tests require that the product maintain its function and perform within specified limits. On a communications product, where performance might be specified in terms of bit error rate, external communications test equipment, specialized cabling, and detailed operational instructions might be in order. Modified firmware or software may be necessary to enable certain functions for some telecom tests. If your product uses a few standard cables, shielded or unshielded, your laboratory can probably supply them. But, if your product uses cabling that are unusual or proprietary, you’ll have to supply them. Also, if your product uses large numbers of cables—as is common with some types of telecom gear, you may have to provide them. Advance preparation prevents unnecessary delays and helps testing stay on schedule. Your laboratory should be able to help you prepare. Sometimes the information on what will be needed is provided verbally by the sales department; in other cases a hard copy document will be provided. For some types of equipment, documentation support will be necessary. The technical support we’ve been spoken of in preceding paragraphs is aimed at getting the equipment to function during testing. However, for some types of approvals, manufacturer-supplied documentation will need to be incorporated into the final laboratory report along with test data. For example, product safety evaluations require information on the properties of safety critical components and selected schematics. Some standards, such as IEC 60601-1 (medical equipment) and IEC 61010-1 (control and instrumentation equipment) require the instruction manual, or key excerpts of it in such areas as: 52 Conformity April 2008

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Conformity Magazine - April 2008 NewsBreaks Editor’s Note Mandatory Analog Cellular Service Ends FCC Releases Quarterly Reports on Consumer Inquiries and Complaints New Standards List Released for The EU’s Low Voltage Directive FDA Issues Notification on Unretrieved Device Fragments FDA Offers Guidance on Waivers for In-Vitro Diagnostic Devices ESD Open Forum Emerging Issues in Standards Challenges in Testing Design Fundamentals Focus on... New Products Product Reviews Premarket Approval Application Guidance Issued by FDA New Jersey Enacts Electronic Waste Recycling Regulations A New U.S. Standard for Workstation and Computer Design Might the CPSC Hold Retailers Accountable for Safe Products? CPSC Loses “Sole Toy Tester” CPSC Actions in the News IEC Standards Update UL Standards Update Telcordia Standards Update From Our “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Department Looking Back: Items from Past Issues of Conformity Advertisers

Conformity Magazine - April 2008

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