Compliance with Energy Star Requirements

Your company is developing a new product or an upgrade to an existing one. You are going to have to comply with the 1 W maximum standby/no-load requirement. Your current internal power supply consumes 3W in no-load operation by itself. You have a few choices. You can find an alternate internal supply that has a low enough no-load consumption that when coupled with any of your product’s other power…

U.S. is Losing All Its Manufacturing to China – Or Is It?

We’ve all heard the bleak news that the United States is no longer a manufacturing power and that most of our products (and especially electronics) are made overseas. Many people also believe that the outsourcing of manufacturing is the primary reason behind the current recession. But what are the facts? U.S Manufacturing is still on top – the United States manufactures the most “stuff” in the world…

Voltage Specifications by Country

Country Pri. Volt Sec. Volt Freq. Plug 1 Plug 2 Plug 3 Plug 4 Plug 5 Afghanistan 220   50 G         Algeria 127 220 50 G B       Am. Samoa 120 240 60 C A K     Angola 220   50 B         Anguilla (UK) 240   50 D         Antigua 230   60 D K       Argentina 220   50 C B       Aruba 115 127 60 A B G K   Australia 240   50 C         Austria 230   50 A B       Azores 220   50 …

Compliance Engineering

Andrew Robbins Marketing Representative Product Safety Engineering, Inc. Federal Communications CommissionEffective September 9th, 2002, the FCC adopted new conducted emissions requirements, which are harmonized with European standards, based on well-known CISPR limits. These new requirements became "available" for use as of September 9th, 2002 (not mandatory at this time). All products still being…

ATX Motherboard Specification

The ATX specification is a public specification intended for widespread use in many types of system, and it has been written as a specification for the PC industry, designed to add value to the PC. ATX was developed as an evolution of the Baby-AT form-factor and was defined to address four major areas of improvement: enhanced ease-of-use, better support for current and future I/O, better support for…

Ball Bearing Vs. Sleeve Fans

Melody Williams Business Unit Manager NMB Technologies Corp. Chatsworth, California As consumers demand smaller, faster computer systems, OEM design engineers race to create systems with compact, more powerful microprocessors and chipsets. However these compressed designs provide engineers with a new enemy - heat. In minutes, densely packaged microprocessors or compact electronic systems can generate…

How to Specify a Power Supply

Lets start with a reality check: Price Target: Often the market you are in will dictate the price point, for example: If you are building a product for the PC or PC peripheral market, you are going to need an inexpensive power supply in order to compete. If you are building a product for the server market, you will need a reliable power supply in order to provide high "availability". Redundancy should…

U.S. Manufacturing is Alive and Kicking

The United States' manufacturing sector, a behemoth during the industrial revolution, has supposedly been bleeding to death for more than a decade at the hands of China where materials and labor are cheaper. However, the United States' demise to its Far East competitor is pure speculation. The United States remains the world's largest manufacturing economy, according to The Manufacturing Institute.…

Zhaga: Paving the Way for LED Standardization

Zhaga is a consortium for the standardization of LED light, and the cooperation provides the development of standard specifications for the interface of LED light engines. An LED light engine is an LED module with interfaces that don't rely on the type of LED technology used in light engines. Zhaga standards enable products created by numerous manufacturers to be used interchangeably through a variety…

UL Develops Standards for Canada

The SCC or Standards Council of Canada has accredited UL as one of the two standards development organizations based outside of Canada. This will enable UL to create standards that are bi-national for our U.S to Canada market.Chief Executive Officer of SCC John Walter has stated that "..the additional accredited standards will offer more standardization solutions to better serve Canadian government,…