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 Safety Lab is pretty much the inner sanctum of a company, but probably also one of the most cost-intensive. FSP has all the necessary certifications for the safety of the products and the development and manufacturing process. This is something they are proud to show at first, because, as we were assured, the cost of achieving and maintaining these standards is extremely high.

The climatic conditions in the Safety Lab are clearly regulated – and it was by far the most pleasant place in the whole complex. But what is the point of such a safety laboratory if all the tests on the previous pages have already been successfully completed?

It is things like consumer protection that are the focus here. Of course, not all tests are highly technical and expensive, but some are amazingly trivial. That doesn’t make them any less important. So let’s start with the very simple first. For example, the honeycomb-shaped openings are tested to ensure that small children’s fingers do not accidentally come too close to live parts.

The insertion test is also important when it comes to the minimum distance to live parts, in case an object inadvertently protrudes through the rear openings later on.

Here the measurements are really precise, because – as the name of the laboratory already says – it is all about the pure safety of the user.

What actually happens at 40 °C and 95 % humidity? Is the protection still working or is there already a risk of electric shock due to the high humidity? By the way, this test is not that far-fetched, because you could have done it on Taiwan on some days without expensive technology simply on the hotel balcony.

The next picture does not show a first class burial, but the supposed shroud is a very special textile, which starts to discolor at a certain temperature. It replaces expensive thermal cameras, because often enough there is no room to accommodate such a camera at all.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to show other things in pictures (but we could at least see them), but besides load, pressure and drop tests, which remind us of one of the big TÜV laboratories, there are also lots of test chambers lined up for specific long-term tests. Finally, we show a small special feature of FSP, which as a large energy consumer even has two power grids. If one of the suppliers fails, electricity can continue to be obtained from the power plant via its own lines. This is particularly important because series of measurements and tests can take days, weeks and even months, and calibrating and restarting the equipment is also extremely (time) consuming.