Ladies and gentlemen,
Once again you've made me happy that I subscribe to this list. Excellent
responses and opinions from a wide range or responsibilities. I do appreciate
it. I haven't had a chance to read all of the respondents yet, there were a
quite a few, but I wanted to express my appreciation to you all.
I'm not disagreeing with the need for the EMC directive or the LVD - quite
the contrary. I simply don't want needless roadblocks (well at least as I see
them to be roadblocks). Each of the directives does a good job at addressing
their areas of concern and I don't see the need for a vendor to attach new
requirements.
Gert had a very interesting comment about EMC addressing safety. He noted
that the EMC directives may under represent the safety issue, and I'm going to
continue to think that over, but for the moment I differ slightly in opinion.
There are essentially two parts to that test - 1) can what leaves the
equipment disturb the public airwaves etc, and 2) can the equipment operate
without significant disturbance in operation when subjected to the various
noise, spikes, dips et al that is anticipated will see in the electromagnetic
atmosphere in which it operates. I would claim that part two does address
safety, albeit indirectly. The safety organizations are charged with
investigating the hazards with normal and some abnormal operating conditions.
If that is true, and the EMC directive says that the thing will operate
"normally" when subjected to the immunity tests, or to phrase it differently
it will not change normal operating states under anticipated EMC stresses, so
if it doesn't change operating states and the safety folks have done a
thorough job of investigating its safety performance the job is complete, and
in fact the EMC directive has addressed safety.
Thanks again Frauline and Frau (Hopefully ladies(y) and gentlemen(man) -
other than being multilingual in pronouncing beer I've just run out of my
German
Gary
