Hybrid and electric powertrain specialists Danfoss Editron has announced the opening of a new in-house testing laboratory in Lappeenranta, Finland, where it will conduct electromagnetic compatibility and environmental tests on its systems and machines.
Following a multi-million Euro investment, the facility will offer a number of benefits to the company including the ability to test products, systems and machines at an earlier stage of the manufacturing process than ever before. It will also enable the company to identify potential issues earlier, when problems are easier to fix than at later stages of product development.
The laboratory has dedicated EMC and environmental testing chambers, which can perform radiative immunity, radiative emissions and electrostatic discharge tests, automotive immunity checks magnetic field immunity and conductive emissions assessments to international and European standards. The facility also contains electronic loads and a high-power direct current power source, plus dust test, salt mist, climatic test and walk-in chambers. Testing undertaken in the laboratory will take between a few hours and several months.
“Previously, all of our EMC and environmental tests were performed at external facilities outside of the Danfoss Group, which created several challenges. It was easy for the queue of products that required approving to bottleneck, due to limitations with the testing facilities, while testing needed to be planned and booked several months in advance. While many of our projects are currently in prototype phase, serial production is expected to start within three years so the need to invest in our own EMC and environmental testing facilities was clear,” said Jussi Hämäläinen, hardware engineer at Danfoss Editron.
The laboratory’s EMC test chamber is already performing tests, assessments and checks. The remaining testing capabilities are expected to enter operation in a few months’ time.
Danfoss Editron’s research and development director Tero Järveläinen added:
“Having in-house testing facilities will enhance our product quality and support our business growth targets to achieve a turnover in the hundreds of millions of EUROS. We have already started to see the benefits of having our own testing equipment, especially in our research and development activities. We’ve been able to improve the way our products behave with regards to conductive emissions, while we’ve also proved that we can verify design improvements quicker than when we used external testing services. Overall, this is a significant investment and improvement in the quality and reliability of the products we design, manufacture and deliver to our customers globally.”
