Electricity At Work Regulations 1989 (S.I. 635)

See Also IPB 4115

The above regulations require that all electrical systems be constructed and maintained so as to prevent danger at all times.

As part of Apricot's manufacturing process, all units are subjected to strict electrical safety testing before they are allowed to leave the factory.

For the benefit of employers who may wish to re-verify their equipment to ensure continued compliance with the above regulations, we have listed below details of the tests that are carried out on all of our production units.

All of the tests listed are carried out as part of our overall product approval process and are monitored, controlled, and defined by various International Regulatory Bodies. Under normal circumstances no damage will occur to the systems when these tests are carried out, but it should be borne in mind that these tests require specialist equipment and test procedures.

Some of the tests listed employ dangerous voltages and currents, hence tests should only be carried out by experienced personnel in controlled environments.

This test is used to verify that all accessible metalwork is securely connected to the main earth terminal of the unit under test.

A 6 volt DC supply providing a current flow of 27 Amperes is applied to the main Earth terminal and each of the accessible metal parts of the unit. The system must not have any resistive path of greater than 0.1 ohms between the main earth terminal and the point under test.

(During this test the resistance of the mains lead is ignored.)

This test is used to verify that the resistance between the mains supply terminals and any metal part is sufficiently high enough to prevent electric shock.

A voltage of 500V DC is applied to the p roduct between the primary earth terminal and the Live and Neutral terminals which have been connected together. The resistance measured must be more than 4 Megohms.

This test is used to verify the integrity of the insulation used within the isolating parts of the equipment.

A voltage of 2.2KV DC is applied between the primary earth terminal and the Live and Neutral terminals, which have been connected together. In the case of double-insulated products, the test is carried out between the supply terminals and the equipment housing or secondary circuit. In this latter test the voltage is increased to 5KV. The voltage is applied for 3 seconds minimum and no breakdown or "flash over" must occur. This test may be carried out using AC voltages, but Filter Capacitors within the PSU may give false or misleading readings.

This test is used to measure the current which passes down the earth wire under normal use. Such currents are usually dependant on the type of filtering components used within the product.

The current between Live and Neutral terminals with respect to earthed metal is measured. The combined total of Live to Earth and Neutral to Earth must be less than 3.5mA.

Detailed below are the Earth Bond Test Points that should be referred to during test number 2. For system units fitted with a thin wire Ethernet connector it should be noted that, as part of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet specification, a building network should only be earthed at one point. The thin wire Ethernet connector is therefore isolated from earth and will fail the earth bond test (this is correct).

LANstation (Test Points)

XEN-LS (Test Points)

Qi (Test Points)

FTe (Test Points)

FTs (Test Points)

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