Shurlok International has established a state-of-the-art electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) test facility at its Pretoria-based Shurlok Advanced Engineering offices. The facility is unique in South Africa as it contains the only GTEM cell in the country and the facility is suited to conduct radiated immunity, radiated emission, conducted emission and transient immunity tests.
Shurlok is a leading designer and manufacturer of automotive electronic systems for local and overseas motor vehicle manufacturers and its product range encompasses instrument clusters, engine management systems, 4 x 4 controllers, alarms and immobilisers, relay integration units, transponders and timer relays to mention but a few.
The need for sophisticated on board automotive electronics both in the area of drive train electronics (engine management systems and diagnostics) and comfort electronics (body control modules) have quadrupled over the past years. It is not uncommon for a basic passenger car to have up to 20 microprocessors on board and in turn the average vehicle harness consists of up to one kilometre of copper wire. The recent move to in-vehicle bus systems (K Bus, Lin Bus, CANBus etc) will reduce the amount of copper wire used, but in turn, adds further complexity with protocol converters and interfaces. The bottom line is that each locally-designed and developed product has to pass stringent EMC tests as a standalone product and also after it is homologated into a vehicle.
Due to the lack of adequate local test facilities Shurlok has, until recently, utilised the EMC test facilities at test houses in Europe. Not only is this very costly, but extremely time consuming due to the distance and the iterative process in ensuring that a product complies as modifications and changes are made. Shurlok's management decided to invest in this state-of-the-art facility in an effort to reduce the design cycle (time-to-market), to save costs and to increase the confidence level in developed products as far as EMC compatibility is concerned. The new facility allows development engineers at Shurlok to conduct ongoing testing during product development and this avoids nasty surprises at the end when the product is submitted for final certification and approval. Shurlok's EMC facility is a pre-compliance test facility at this stage and final validation and certification must still be conducted at accredited overseas test facilities.
The facility at Shurlok Advanced Engineering became fully operational in May this year and while Shurlok will obviously maximise its use for the testing of its own products, the spare capacity and the experience of the Shurlok EMC Engineers are also available to outside companies requiring formal compliance testing.
For more information contact Louis Marais (EMC engineer) or Manie Du Preez (technical director), Shurlok Advanced Engineering, 012 804 1871.
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