Have any good EMC requirement resources? 3

[geekEE]

Does anyone have any good resources for information about global EMC (electromagnetic compliance) requirements? I'm in the USA, but the consumer electronics company that I works for ships products around the world. However, trying to find out what testing is required is painful. There seems to be very little centralized information out there. I can't find magazines or books or websites. I need an "EMC regulations for dummies" type of resource!

There used to be a couple of magazines (Conformity, CE magazine), but they seem to have gone out of business because their websites show the "current issue" to be quite old.

I see that there's an EMC forum here on Eng-tips, but there hasn't been any activity in quite a while, which is why I'm posting here.

Any places that I should be looking?

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[pstuckey]

http://www.compliance-club.com/

has a lot of EMC info.

Peter

 

[VEBill]

Look on the back of any 'universal input' (100-240vac, 50-60Hz) laptop power brick. Usually one whole side is covered with 'marks' for power safety and E3 qualifications. ;-)

Since you would probably have to hire a test house anyway, why not partner-up early with one?

 

[geekEE]

Peter, thanks for the link. That seems to have some good info.

VE1BLL, we do have a number of test houses that I could call to find out some info, but I don't want to have to call them for every single question. Where do test houses get their info on global EMC regs? Oh, and what are these E3 qualifications that you mention?

 

[VEBill]

'FCC', 'IC' (Industry Canada), 'CE' (Europe), etc. There are more safety marks than E3 marks, but it's amazing how many standards are involved in a $30 item.


I just checked of the FCC website starting from the top, and it's less than useful. But my google-fu leads to this:

http://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/Welcome.html

The Industry Canada website is a breeze:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ceb-bhst.nsf/eng/home

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ceb-bhst.nsf/eng/h_tt00011.html

And this is interesting (!) and may be very helpful:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mra-arm.nsf/eng/home

My suggestion about partnering early is that if you're going to pay eg. $50k for a complete E3 test qualification program, it's easy to add another eg. $5k to the contract to cover a week of expert advice. And that advice would probably help to reduce the risk of another round of testing.

In my line of work, we have E3 experts on staff. And the requirements, such as MIL-STD-461, are handed to us on a silver platter. And the resultant E3 reports (from the test houses) look like telephone books.