Industry Report

An industrial power supply may be built into a machine on a factory floor, as the name implies. Equally though, the term is used to specify products intended for a myriad of other markets; CCTV, lighting, battery chargers, medical equipment, marine, EPOS, servers and PCs are just some examples. While widely diverse, these applications share a common need for products that are resilient to the environments they will face, while providing a reliable and cost-effective solution.

Features

  • Safety, efficiency and regulatory compliance
  • Ruggedisation
  • Reliability
  • Availability and redundancy
  • Communications, monitoring and control
  • Efficiency and environmental impact
  • Size reduction and scalability
  • Battery chargers
  • Conclusion

Conclusion

This report has shown how the current move to the 62368-1 standard – and for medical equipment, EN 60601-1 – is making equipment manufacturers fundamentally rethink how they design safety into their products, moving from applying prescriptive rules to following a hazards- or risk-based approach. Additionally manufacturers must accommodate increasingly stringent standards relating to energy efficiency and resilience to environmental stresses.

While highlighting the demands that standards make on manufacturers, the report also emphasises the benefits they offer. Apart from protecting users from injury and manufacturers from litigation, standards have information quantifying the parameters that designers should expect from their target applications, so that they can accommodate them successfully.

The report includes some notes on battery chargers, as the choice of charger is essential to realising the maximum possible benefits of improving battery technology.

The above factors make the power supply selection task both critical and demanding. Accordingly it makes sense to discuss your particular application’s requirements with a well-established, knowledgeable PSU supplier. This will pay dividends with both a more competitive end-product and protection from the threats described above.