Don MacArthur

This month's blog explains X-type capacitors, which suppress emissions in switch-mode power supplies and variable drives.

To avoid costly errors in selection, invest the time upfront to gain a basic yet thorough grasp of key amplifier specifications and operating principles before identifying the optimal model for your application needs.

Making time for even just 30 minutes of focused reading each day will keep you on the path of continuous learning.

Choosing an EMC test lab to work with is one of the most important decisions any electronics design engineer or product developer has to make.

Occasionally, we are asked to help develop shielding effective for near-field low-frequency (LF) magnetic fields, perhaps in a situation where some regulatory agency has imposed limits on LF magnetic field emissions of our product, and we are forced to comply.

Although understanding each capacitor type and behavior is daunting and difficult to memorize, it is prudent that every aspiring engineer and technician involved in design for EMC at least have a rudimentary understanding of what capacitor technologies are available.

To determine a shielding material’s potential absorption loss capability, you must first know the frequency or frequencies of concern and, second, what shield materials you have available.

From the entire pool of test equipment available at our disposal as electronics engineers and technicians, the most useful is undoubtedly the oscilloscope. 

We leave the basics behind and explore more of the state-of-the-art advanced cool features, functionality and specifications that are available in today’s oscilloscopes.

In this article, we describe a method for analyzing data using the FFT algorithm found in Python’s SciPy module. The reader should know that the SciPy module also includes methods for other FFT algorithms, such as the Inverse FFT and Discrete Sine and Cosine methods.