Karen Burnham

2 months ago | incompliancemag.com | Karen Burnham

MIL-STD-461 RE102 is probably the most commonly failed test in the aerospace/defense world, with 50-90% of units failing their first pass testing. This is a frequent cause of schedule delays, first for troubleshooting, and then for all the meetings needed to process waivers. There are ways that it can be tailored, even very early in the product development process, to minimize the need for waivers after test failures.

Jan 23, 2025 | incompliancemag.com | Karen Burnham

Some requirements are set in stone. But many of them need to be tailored for your specific hardware. If you apply standards blindly, you’ll run into all kinds of schedule-delaying problems: test methods and setups that don’t make sense, test failures that aren’t important and need to be waived, and missing problems that will pop up later during integration and checkout. Some standards, such as MIL-STD-464 and MIL-STD-461, are explicit that they must be tailored.

Jan 15, 2025 | geekmom.com | Ruth Suehle |Karen Burnham |Rebecca Angel |Corrina Lawson

After exiting bankruptcy just last year, JoAnn Stores has filed Chapter 11 again, and it looks like this time they’re done. Gordon Brothers (the company currently liquidating Big Lots and some years back A.C. Moore) is the “stalking horse,” which means the company is open to other bidders, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. If no others come along in the next 60 days, they will begin going out of business sales at all locations.

Dec 5, 2024 | incompliancemag.com | Karen Burnham

There are plenty of ways of testing units for radiated immunity (or radiated susceptibility, for the aerospace/defense world). As of MIL-STD-461 Rev E, that document allows RS103 to be tested in a reverb chamber as an alternative to the more traditional absorber-lined semi-anechoic chamber (ALSE) test setup. In the automotive industry, ISO 11452-11 describes a reverb test method for components, and this has flowed down to some OEM-specific requirements, like Ford’s RI114.

Oct 31, 2024 | incompliancemag.com | Karen Burnham

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of this new column, “Standards Practice.” I’m Karen Burnham, currently Vice President of Standards for the IEEE EMC Society. I’m hoping to use this space to do two things: educate people about standards and also use standards to educate people about electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.