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Design Practices for Military EMC and Environmental Compliance

1402 F2 coverThe reliable operation of complex electronic communications, control and armament systems in extreme environments demands stringent design criteria and careful validation. Severe shock, vibration, heat, humidity and airborne contaminants are common in land, sea and air platforms.

Smoking or Non-smoking?

In the Summer of 2000 I booked some burn time at a small environmental lab in south Dallas. The facility was not exactly state-of-the-art, but the price was right: $300 a burn. It sure beat paying about $4,000 a burn at an NRTL at the time. For 300 bucks, you got the chamber, a methane line burner connected by a hose to a big tank of methane gas, and a technician who would manually operate the whole thing from an adjoining isolated room. A fire extinguisher was always ready “just in case”.

MIL-STD-464B – A Review of the Latest Revisions to the Standard: Part 1

LATE-BREAKING NEWS UPDATE!

Due to problems in the digital publishing process, MIL-STD-464B 01 October 2010 is scrapped and MIL-STD-464C, release date 01 December 2010 will take its place. There are no technical changes from what are described in this three part article, but the replacement for MIL-STD-464A will be MIL-STD-464C. MIL-STD-464B dated 01 October 2010 will cease to exist.

Latest Developments in the European Regulations on Eco Design

The compliance world was shaken up in 2005 with the realization that the European Union was enacting legislation that would require manufacturers wishing to sell their electrical or electronic products in the EU to reduce the environmental impact of these products through design. The practice of eco design was to be enshrined in Law and many companies who would not normally have considered the environmental impact of their products now faced the prospect of being legally obliged to do so. Since the introduction of this legislation, in the form of the Energy using Products Directive, industry has been monitoring its phased implementation to see to what degree the requirements will affect their designs. Following a summary of the scope and major features of the legislation, this article will review the latest developments in the implementation process and give an overview of the emerging design requirements. It will go on to discuss the important areas of conformity assessment, market surveillance and enforcement and conclude by looking at possible future developments and discuss to what degree the legislation fulfils the goal of reducing environmental impacts.