Peter, There are several issues that need to be addressed in this area. The needed performance is either to limit a burn to a person who might come in contact with the part or prevent a fire if the equipment is covered by a flammable item (such as a towel in the case of a bathroom heater).
Standards focus on these requirements in different ways, as you have already learned. To prevent burns consideration must be given to both the conductivity of the material as well as the time of contact. Here's some augmented US data from the Shriners Burn Institute which was shared here last year. metal glass plastic time to serious burn deg C deg C deg C __________________________________________ 49 59 74 over 5 min 52 62 77 1 1/2 to 2 min 55 65 80 about 30 sec 57 67 82 about 10 sec 60 70 85 under 5 sec 63 73 88 under 3 sec 66 76 91 about 1 1/2 sec 68 78 93 about 1 sec subtract 20C for handles, knobs or other purposefully touched parts Hope that this helps... - - - - - Peter E Perkins Principal Product Safety Consultant Tigard, ORe 97281-3427 +1/503/452-1201 phone/fax p.perk...@ieee.org email visit our website: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/peperkins - - - - - --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to majord...@ieee.org with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to ed.pr...@cubic.com, j...@gwmail.monarch.com, ri...@sdd.hp.com, or roger.volgst...@compaq.com (the list administrators).