EMC Test Labs: What To Look For With Your EMC Test Lab

Have you already spent some time looking for an EMC test lab?

If you’ve never been involved in EMC testing, picking the right lab can be a very hard experience for the first-time product tester.

To the uninitiated, every EMC lab seems to be about the same. But that is very far from the actual truth.

You go on Google and click on the first result, and immediately you are sent to a webpage with shiny images of anechoic test chambers, EMI testing antennas, and a huge list of laboratory testing standards that this facility can test too.

Everything seems in order. You start to think this is easier then your engineering colleagues have told you it would be. You think you have everything under control and have your final selection made.

But your mother didn’t raise a fool, and you think to yourself “AH-HA, I should at least check one more EMC test lab to make sure I’m not getting ripped off!”

And off you go to the next website.

There you find, yet again, another pristine webpage with shiny images of anechoic test chambers, testing antennas, and a huge list of laboratory testing standards that may or may not actually apply as to what you need for EMC testing your product.

Now you are confused. They seem identical.

So for the next step, you decide to submit your product information and reach out to the test lab. Now things get interesting.

Both labs send you back a quotation for your EMC testing. Only problem is that the labs are quoting two different things. One is recommending a certain test standard to me your CE testing requirements, but the other lab is saying a completely different thing.

Oh my. Things started off so well.

So now you are back to Google, going to yet another EMC test lab’s website, which is also covered pristine images of anechoic test chambers, testing antennas, and has huge lists of laboratory testing standards. Yet again.

It’s only now that, you start to see that knowing what to look for in an EMC Test Lab is more important then you thought. It’s hard to judge the quality of an EMC Test Lab from a simple visit to their website.

Picking the Wrong EMC Test Lab Can Be Fatal To Your Product Launch

It’s easy to assume that EMC test labs are just a giant commodity and one test lab is the same as the other.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We’ve had countless clients come in the door for testing, after going through a horrific testing process. (And not to name names, but often times some of the times the most horrifying client stories are coming from some of the largest labs out there). Clients who have EMC testing projects go awry can be financially harmed in countless ways.

Your product launch is completely delayed and your carefully scheduled production process is thrown to the wind as your EMC testing goes completely awry.
You may have intended to be able to sell your market in certain specific countries, and your labs’ salesperson assured you that they have quoted the correct required testing; but at the end of the process it turns out, the required testing wasn’t correctly quoted and that your lab is now going to take several weeks of time to re-schedule the required testing. And yes, there will be extra charge because they don’t have fixed price testing.
You received a specific request from a potential buyer of your product that they require a specific testing report that must come from an accredited test lab. You contact a test lab and they assure that they have “done this report a million times” and have no issues with your testing needs. When it comes time to share the test reports with your buyer, it turns out, that even thought the test report may be correct the test is actually not accredited to perform the testing and so the results are invalid.

These are just a few of the nightmare scenarios we’ve helped our clients work through with FCC testing and CE testing projects.

What to Look For In An EMC Test Lab

There are a lot of EMC test labs out there, and here is what we think any person looking for a test lab should be considering and asking potential labs:

1) EMC Lab Accreditation

You rely on test labs to provide you with 100% accurate EMC readings. But have you ever stopped to consider how do you know that your test lab is accurate and performing the testing correctly?

Welcome to the concept of lab accreditation.

The various governments of the world have approved certain third party organizations (such as A2LA and or the Standards Council of Canada) that annually travel on site to EMC test labs and audit the facilities.

During those audits, the lab is evaluated on their calibration of readings, competency of staff, and an assorted litany of documental controls to ensure that their test process is completely accurate and repeatable.

EMC Test labs are not only accredited on a lab basis, but have a concept of a “scope accreditation.” What a scope accreditation means is that your specific test lab is accredited to perform certain tests on an accredited basis.

This where many of our clients fall into problems sometimes. They choose a lab who can perform the testing, but they may not be accredited to produce the result and so the test report itself is meaningless from a regulatory perspective.

An accredited lab is the gold standard by which all other labs are measured up to. If you are looking for an EMC Test Lab, you must make sure they are accredited for the measurements you need to make.

Prior to 2016, many labs did not have be accredited in order to perform EMC testing for clients (notably in the USA). This led to a huge proliferation of sub-standard test labs and test reports that were not accurate.

In 2016, the FCC issued a major ruling that they would no longer accept non-accredited labs test reports for wireless certifications.

To present day, an accredited lab is still required for any wireless certifications, and in general we do not recommend you work with non-accredited testing facilities given the availability of our services.

In our testing network, we only work with fully accredited labs who have the complete accredited scope for your required testing. Our partner labs go through a full onboarding process, and only once they meet our exacting standards do we begin to assign client projects.

You can rest easy know that your product’s test reports will be from a competent fully accredited testing facility with appropriate scope accreditation as your project testing requires.

2) Testing Lead Times

EMC testing tends to be the last element of any design project (and as former product designers, we certainly understand why). That leaves a lot of clients in a tenuous position in terms of getting their projects scheduled and testing underway.

Many labs will require you to book time far in advance and (will even ask for a deposit upfront!), which makes it incredibly hard to predict whether you’ll actually have a product ready in advance as you are iterating through your design and nailing down the actual functionality of the product.

One other fun fact: certain larger test labs, may favor certain large repeat customers, and if it happens that they need to put your project testing on the shelf due to an emergency request… let’s just say we’ve heard this happens from time to time.

When you consider an EMC Testing Lab, you should ask what the lead times look like to have your product EMC tested. You may find out that the short lead times the sales person mentioned to you early in the process, are not exactly what the actual lead times will be once your project is underway.

By default with our testing process, we slot your test projects into our schedule where there are immediate openings. From the moment we receive your test samples, we have the testing underway.

From what we can tell from customers our lead times are some of the lowest in the industry as a function of our business model. We do not require advance lead times and we accurately predict your testing lead time from the initial sales inquiry.

3) Design Background & Technical Expertise

There’s a reputation that most EMC test lab staff are very well trained at running test equipment, but they are not known as designers.

While we don’t think that is the case for every professional in the field, many of our clients have struggled with test labs who do not have sufficient technical and design backgrounds to assist in getting their devices ready for testing and understanding the big picture that you as the client are facing.

When evaluating an EMC test lab, feel free to ask them what kind of devices they’ve designed recently and when was the last time they laid out a PCB. You very well may be shocked at what you hear. This is quite uncommon for any test labs to be able assist in a design or firmware capacity with your device.

One of the largest differentiators in working with us, is that we are first and foremostly product designers ourselves. We’ve built countless wireless devices and consumers products of all shapes and sizes. There is not an EMC failure, firmware condition, or production issue we have not seen ourselves in some form or another.

Many labs just assume you’ll know how to get the devices ready for testing and will simply tell you to contact the manufacturer for assistance if you seriously need help. While we all know and love our major semiconductor companies of choice, we also know that contacting them for support is probably the last thing anyone wants to get involved in.

Most EMC test labs just do not have the skills or knowledge to assist in preparing your device for testing.

Part of our value add to our clients is that you can rely on our team of experienced designers to be able to work in your engineering language and tools to get your device’s hardware and firmware ready for testing. Most labs are not able to provide that level of support, and those that can certainly do not provide that level of support at no cost as with our standard fixed price project approach.

You can rely us to assist in getting your product ready for testing and ensuring that things run smoothly by performing the preparation work before formal EMC testing is underway.

4) One Destination For All Testing

Many smaller labs may only specialize in certain forms of testing that your product may require.

As products become more wireless and complicated, what you’ll find is that a traditional EMC lab that maybe only specializes in FCC testing may not be able to perform all the required safety testing that your product may require.

A typical wireless IoT device project for us usually is for wireless EMC testing and certification for FCC, ISED (Canada), and CE (Europe).

In any one of that given project we will need to perform EMC testing for both FCC / ISED / CE, CE LVD testing for CE RED’s safety requirements, SAR testing for North American requires, wireless radio certifications, and any other required environmental testing as needed for clients.

Many labs do not have all of these capabilities in-house and will end up sub-contracting out the portions of testing they cannot perform.

This will dramatically increase your lead times and raise the potential for delays as your product samples are shipped around multiple test facilities who specialize in each specific area.

In addition to testing delays, by having to sub-out testing to other facilities the overall costs of your projects will be much higher then going to one source that can handle all the details of your EMC testing.

We have the ability to select the ideal accredited EMC Test lab for your project who has all the capabilities in-house needed to exactly fit your test requirements. It’s incredibly rare that we do not have the capabilities needed for your testing in a one-stop-shop scenario (usually, the only case this happens is in extremely complex global certification scenarios involving smaller country approvals).

Your test project will have the benefit of being performed in one sole location and everyone is in direct coordination with the various departments working on your project. Testing will run smoothly and will be performed in an optimal manner.

5) Costs & Re-Testing

If there is one rule we learned about sales, it’s that we shouldn’t talk about costs!

Well, we love to talk about costs at Sunfire Testing because we also think you’ve probably been paying too much for your EMC Testing in the past. We said it, and we’ll back it up in our quotation to you.

Most of our customers end up saving thousands of dollars a project by utilizing our services.

Most labs will agree to a fixed price for the initial testing of your project, but if you dig deep in your project quotation what you’ll find is that if your project requires any re-testing you’ll be moving over to an hourly re-testing rate. And let us tell you, that hourly re-testing rate is probably several hundred dollars per hour.

When evaluating a test lab you should ask them what constitutes a “failure” and at what point will you be responsible for additional hourly fees?

We’ve seen client invoices where they were charged by-the-email for basic setup and compliance questions from their EMC Test lab. We don’t get it either.

You need to make sure that you will be able to receive adequate support and re-testing from your EMC test lab and not a huge unexpected invoice at the end of your EMC testing project.

We run projects on a completely different basis from most EMC Testing Labs. All of our projects have a definite fixed price with all-inclusive pricing.

We don’t run the taxi meter on you like that. We work with fair and transparent pricing that is known upfront and there are no hidden extras fees.

This fixed price project model includes not only the test reporting but the related compliance support for the manual language, product labeling, and product declarations as needed to bring your product into full compliance in all the regions you are testing for.

There are no additional charges for re-testing, and our dedicated support staff can assist in remediation and design assistance as needed to help you get your product through testing.

Consider Sunfire Testing as your next EMC Testing Lab

Hopefully you’ve come to realize that EMC testing is not a simple commodity product. There are numerous elements to consider when evaluating what lab to use for your EMC testing:

Lab Accreditation
Lead Times
Design Background & Technical Expertise
One-Stop Destination Efficiencies
Lab Costs & Additional Hourly Fees

We admit it: we too have shiny images of anechoic test chambers, EMI testing antennas, and a huge list of laboratory testing standards on our webpage – but we do thing very differently from what you’ve experienced in the past. We’d like to take a shot at your next project and show you a different way to conduct your EMC testing.

All of our labs are fully accredited. Due to the wide nature of our test partners we can immediately slot you in for testing with short lead times to a well matched lab with the exact capabilities you need.

By working with us you also get access to all of our collective design knowledge and EMC expertise to assist in preparing your device and any required remediation.

In terms of lab pricing while every project is different our customers tend to save 50%, off of other existing quotations and get to de-risk their testing with our all-inclusive fixed price model.

They also seem to come back too (we really do appreciate the return business)! So we think we must be doing something right.

Whether you are in the early planning stages for a new product or need EMC testing right away, please feel free to Request a Quote or contact us today with any questions regarding our capabilities and pricing. We think you’ll find our approach a bit refreshing, and our anechoic chamber pictures are pretty shiny too!