On discovery tour: How safe, durable and quiet power supplies are created | Retro

1 - Intro, Start in Asia 2 - MTBF 3 - Environment 4 - HALT and Life Span 5 - Airflow and Pressure 6 - ESD, EFT 7 - EMI, EMC 8 - Noise 9 - Safety Lab 10 - From Prototype to Golden Sample 11 - Conclussion

The ESD Test (Electrostatic Discharge)

For this test one simulates an electrostatic discharge. This is a sudden and brief electrical current that can flow between two objects with different electrical potentials. In extreme cases, this can even cause the total failure of the power supply.

For this purpose, each power supply unit is subjected to this simulation of a violent flashover at many precisely defined points. Since it is not a completely closed case, this test is particularly important, for example, to test whether and how safe the current case really is in an emergency, despite the openings.

EFT-Test (Electro Fast Transient) and Surge Test (Surge)

Now we simulate peaks that can occur, for example, when inductive loads are switched off. The word shutdown may not sound that dangerous at first, and most people will only know about power-up issues and blown fuses. However, the popular saying that devices mainly break down when they are switched off is not really a coincidence.

The surge immunity test finally concludes a series of tests, because you also want to know beforehand how a power supply unit will react to such an extreme case – for example, weather-related surges in the mains.