No way am I jumping in the middle of this debate, but it is extremely useful in another way.
A few observations: ESD is by its very nature a chaotic event (air discharge more so than contact). It is not entirely surprising that someone who has spent decades working on something would find examples of non-idealities in the work of technicians doing rote work following canned test procedures. A test facility isn’t going to make a profit employing a septuagenarian devoted to crossing every “t” and dotting every “i.” (Written by someone pushing that age bracket pretty hard). IFF (if and only if) Mr. Smith’s observations are correct, that is an indictment of the test requirement/method. That is, it is the responsibility of the standards committees to write these such that they can be adequately performed by the average test facility and personnel. If it takes someone with five decades of experience, and they must spend an inordinate amount of time ($$$) to get it right, then the standard is a failure. -- Ken Javor (256) 650-5261 From: "doug emcesd.com" <[email protected]> Reply-To: "doug emcesd.com" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, August 11, 2023 at 11:26 AM To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PSES] thoughts on ESD test lab problems I didn’t say most labs are bad. Errors do happen and for me almost every lab I have used has made a mistake. These errors are rare but do happen and the effect of a single error can be very costly. One lab made an especially bad mistake for a small company that engaged me that cost the company a lot of money, has since improved their game by instituting quality procedures they should have had anyway. The lab gave the company passing data but in fact the plot looked like the technician forgot to plug the antenna in, noise level of the instrumentation! Based on that, the company signed a contract for price and delivery for a million units of their product. The ultimate fix needed was a different core design of an inductor that cost them US $0.30. $300k is a lot of money for a small company. I can give many more examples. Usually the problem causes a product to fail when it actually should have passed. I have many examples that happened to me over the last 40 years in both private and commercial labs. The errors are still rare, but do happen. Over enough testing a person, like myself, will encounter an error with any given lab. Of the errors I have encountered, three were the result of the staff in the lab not being competent (over a span of 40 years), the rest were just simple mistakes, maybe another dozen or so. Again, this was over decades, so rare, but many millions of dollars were at stake in each case. In two cases, the lab personnel became a bit belligerent when I gently suggested they performed the test incorrectly. In both cases, the labs relented and retested after we examined the test standard and they realized they were testing incorrectly. A lab client needs to keep an eye out to make sure such an error does not happen to them. On the other hand, I have seen a lot of great labs. One, in Silicon Valley, I consider to be the best in the industry! But they did make one mistake on a test for me years ago, minimal impact at the time and it can't happen again. Doug Smith Sent from my iPhone IPhone: 408-858-4528 Office: 702-570-6108 Email: [email protected] Website: http://dsmith.org From: John Woodgate <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2023 07:02 To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PSES] thoughts on ESD test lab problems That's right. It is good to call attention to problems that may well be deeply hidden or not recognized as a possibility, but it is necessary to concentrate on the facts and leave out peripheral matters that don't help to deal with the issue. On 2023-08-11 14:28, Larry K. Stillings wrote: You could certainly word this in a different way that doesn’t generalize how “most” test labs are bad and/or incompetent. How about in the future you find a different way to word things. This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Website: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/ Instructions: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Mike Sherman at: [email protected] Rick Linford at: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher at: [email protected] To unsubscribe from the EMC-PSTC list, click the following link: https://listserv.ieee.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=EMC-PSTC&A=1 This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Website: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/ Instructions: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Mike Sherman at: [email protected] Rick Linford at: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher at: [email protected] To unsubscribe from the EMC-PSTC list, click the following link: https://listserv.ieee.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=EMC-PSTC&A=1 - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Website: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/ Instructions: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Mike Sherman at: [email protected] Rick Linford at: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <[email protected]> _________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the EMC-PSTC list, click the following link: https://listserv.ieee.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=EMC-PSTC&A=1
