dBi Corporation
Laboratory
Certificate Number 1985-01
The American Association for Laboratory
Accreditation (A2LA) has accredited dBi Corporation to perform:
Two major advantages of using an accredited test house are confidence in and
wide acceptance of the test reports, and faster Time to Market for your
products. Accreditation is formal recognition of a
test house's/laboratory's:
- Technical competence to perform the tests covered by its Scope of
Accreditation
- Quality system to ensure that it complies, and will continue to comply,
with all the pertinent national/ international laws and standards.
The A2LA has Mutual Recognition Agreements
(MRA's) with other Accreditation Bodies, countries, and economies around the
world. Under these MRA's, these groups agree to accept testing/calibrations
done by any A2LA-accredited test house/laboratory within its Scope of
Accreditation as though they had done the work themselves. So you can legally
enter many worldwide markets by preparing a simple Declaration of Conformity
(DoC) accompanied by the appropriate safety, EMC/EMI/ESD, and other pertinent
test reports, without having to retest your product for each market. For
example, the FCC permits companies to market Class B personal computers and
peripherals under a DoC if the EMC testing is done by an accredited
laboratory.
dBi Corporation also performs, but is not currently accredited
(tentatively planned for May 2003) for:
Four major concerns when running EMC tests are:
- Accuracy.
- Thoroughness.
- Speed.
- Documentation.
We use the facilities and equipment of an A2LA-Accredited EMC laboratory that
is associated with a major electronics manufacturer. The 10m Semi-Anechoic
Chamber lets us make fully FCC-/CISPR-compliant Radiated Emissions
measurements year round. We use a 3m Semi-Anechoic Chamber for Radiated
Immunity measurements and debugging. We do Conducted Emissions measurements
in a shielded room. The remainder of the tests are done in two other labs, at
fully-equipped test stations. Most tests are done under software control for
repeatability and consistent data-reduction. We share the EMC laboratory with
a number of other users, and our client's time is precious, so we try to be
fully equipped to quickly handle any problems that may crop up during a test
session:
dBi Corporation also does:
- Consulting in EMC/EMI/ESD.
- Training in Design for EMC/EMI/ESD.
- Consulting and serves as an expert witness in legal cases that may
involve EMC/EMI/ESD.
We like to become involved with products early in the design cycle, preferably
before printed circuit board (PCB) layout begins. From our extensive
experience in putting electronic products into mass production, both in
designing products and in
designing production testers for products,
we can recommend:
- Simple, cheap ways to minimize emissions, and maximize immunity to
noise, software bugs, and other disturbing factors.
- Safety and EMC/EMI/ESD standards you should strive to meet, so that your
product(s) can be marketed worldwide.
- Ways to make your product(s) safe and reliable.
- Ways to design your product(s) so that they can be manufactured,
tested, repaired, and serviced economically.
- Ways to choose components and manufacturing processes to give your
product(s) a reasonable production lifetime.
- Ways to make your product(s) easy to bring up and debug.
- Ways to make your product(s) flexible, so that you can meet new and
changing design requirements without massive redesign.
- Ways to design cables and PCB's to meet all of the above requirements
at low cost and with low risk.
We can also help you find and fix many problems that arise during:
- The development of products and equipment.
- The transition to production.
- In the field.
We have ready access to the Internet, dBi's own technical library, two
other large corporate technical libraries in Lexington, and the University of
Kentucky Engineering Library. We also have access to engineering libraries at other
universities both inside and outside Kentucky. So as needed, we can quickly
and thoroughly research issues in:
- Worldwide design requirements.
- Mechanical design.
- Power supplies.
- Electrical design.
- Cable design.
- Electronic design.
- PCB layout.
- Software design.
- Development testing.
- Product qualification.
A Brief History of dBi Corporation
Don Bush founded dBi Corporation in 1995, shortly after his
retirement from Lexmark International. At that point he had had over 30 years
experience in EMC design, development, and measurement with IBM and
Lexmark. Don was a registered Professional Engineer and a
NARTE-certified EMC Engineer. When Don
died in December 2001 he was an Honorary Life Member, Director, and
Distinguished Lecturer for the
IEEE EMC Society.
John R. Barnes was a co-worker of Don's at IBM and
Lexmark. John began a Pre-Retirement Leave of Absence from Lexmark in early
2002, and shortly thereafter bought dBi. John has
over 29 years of experience putting electronic products into mass production
as a Firmware Programmer at Sycor, Test Engineer at IBM, and Hardware
Developer at IBM and Lexmark.
John has about 22 years training and experience in EMC/EMI, and about 20 years
in ESD. He is the author of a book,
Electronic System Design: Interference and Noise
Control Techniques which was published by Prentice-Hall in 1987 (out of
print). His book was translated into
Russian and published by Mir in 1990. More
recently, John wrote an article, "Designing Electronic Equipment for ESD
Immunity" which was published in Printed
Circuit Design magazine and on their web site. He is also the author of a
number of Technical Reports, Design Guidelines, and white papers about:
- Designing products for worldwide markets.
- Putting electronic products into mass production.
dBi Corporation may be contacted by:
- E-mail at
jrbarnes@iglou.com
- Phone at (859)253-1178.
- Fax at (859)252-6128.
- Snail-mail at:
dBi Corporation
216 Hillsboro Ave
Lexington, KY 40511-2105
Last revised June 27, 2002.
