About Us
A place to breathe - lovely Colorado
"A nice place to raise your kids"
We moved to Colorado from Silicon Valley in 1996 to be able to buy a house without the extreme pressure of the overpriced mortgage, too much crime, too many people, too much is too much!
So, after a few years of living here in Longmont, Colorado – just down the road from beautiful Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park – we decided to start our own business. Even though we already had over 15 years working for other EMI Labs we wanted to start an EMI Lab structured to work with Design Engineers to help them make design changes to pass FCC, CE and FDA requirements for Electromagnetic Compatibility. Over the years Design Mitigation for EMI is what I’ve specialized in so setting up a lab to helps guys pass is what I’ve wanted to do since 1987 when I had my first job out of college working for CKC labs in Brea, California.
Our first large equipment aquisition was an EMCO 5317 GTEM, the largest GTEM built. It helped us take data quickly, roughly a fourth of the time that multi-million dollar chambers take, for the same data – well actually better. GTEM’s give you total radiated power across the spectrum, semi-anechoic chambers do not.The GTEM measurement uncertainty is also much lower than semi-anechoic chambers. The FCC and CISPR has accepted GTEM’s for full compliance since the mid 90’s. As time has proven, our GTEM has been a very successful tool for EMI Engineering Development, fast, accurate, repeatable. Over the years we have correlated our data to over a dozen test sites including the 10 Meter state of the art semi-anechoic chamber that HP built in Ft. Collins, Colorado at somewhere in the neighborhood of a $6 million dollar budget!
Things have gone well since 2004 when we started the lab. We’ve added more clients – almost all by word of mouth – and added more equipment to where we can do all the FCC, CE and FDA tests now. We also write reports for these standards.
As the years went by the Engineers I worked with asked me if they could self-declare CE using my data. Since I was trained by TUV Product Service for more than 4 years, when the CE Mark was new, I have a strong foundation in the proper way to test and write reports, per the standards. So the answer was yes, they could self-declare based on our testing and reports. You can research self declare for the CE Mark for yourself here, at the US Dept of Commerce. It’s funny how the big labs don’t want to talk about this…
Check this link…. US Dept of Commerce – Self declare for the CE Mark
While working in Silicon Valley I also worked for an Engineer that had previously worked for the FCC in the lab where the FCC verified all the test reports submitted to them. Tom Cokenias taught us the intentions behind the testing so we understood the reasons why we tested. To this day his insight has given me an understanding of the FCC regulations that few people I work with ever have.
We have done a ton of work over the years for a local manufacturer of an Electro Surgical Generator, when I first worked for them, by the name of Valley Lab, then Covidien now they are called Medtronic. A few years back I was working with an amazing Engineer there by the name of Randy Anderson (God rest his Soul). He arranged for us to buy a 3 meter fully anechoic chamber that they had in storage and didn’t have any room for at their facility. We installed the chamber here and wrote software to fully automate the testing. This chamber has proven to be just as valuable as the GTEM. Again, fast, accurate and repeatable. We have taken lots of data in the Fully Anechoic Room (FAR) and the GTEM and have established a standard deviation between the two chambers to be less than 2 dB. A big part of this correlation has to do with an EMC Engineer by the name of Pete Berquist. With over 40 years in the EMI field he worked for HP for most of that time setting up many EMI Labs. He also for Intel. He was part of the team that built the $6 million dollar, state of the art in the world, 10 meter radiated emissions chamber in Ft Collins. He helps us with all of our cals and also has helped with lots of automation software we use here in the lab. We owe Pete a big debt of gratitude. We can’t repay him for how much he has helped us over the years.
Just to highlight a couple of projects, we worked with Google and the National Renewable Energy Lab on the million dollar “little box challenge”. Our data helped predict the winner. We also worked with the Federal Election Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to give them feedback on voting machine testing requirements for EMI. We’ve worked with lots of local medical and scientific lab equipment companies. Some of them are working on projects to help solve the pandemic.
Even though I’m getting older I don’t ever plan on retiring, maybe just slowing down and letting the younger guys have more fun. I enjoy the science of this work, always seeing something new, and helping people get their products to market. Not to mention the interesting “characters” we have the privilege of working with. Some very smart Guys!!
We’re a small team that’s ready to help you. Since we’re small we don’t have time for the extra baloney that other labs seem to have plenty of time for!
If you are having a difficult problem that others are having a hard time with, contact us. We can solve it, quickly.
Or, if you just want to come by for a lab tour, free advice and a coffee, come on by!
It was my pleasure having the chance to tell you some of our story.
Dennis King – Senior EMC Engineer
Electromagnetic Compatibility
Dennis King - Owner
EMI Test Lab
Senior EMC Engineer
After 4 years in the Army I went back to school and received an Electrical Engineering Technology degree from a small private college in So California, NEC.
I've worked for CKC Labs, Xerox, Intertek, 3COM, TUV - a German Notified Body - and Cielo, a Telecom Startup that inverted the VCSEL laser. At all of these companies I have specialized in learning how to re-design to pass the EMI standards with most of my 33 years working in the labs actually doing the work.
Since 2004 we have had EMI Test Lab.
We made it through the last Recession and are well positioned to make it through the Pandemic.
Uriah Higgins
EMC Lab Manager
Uriah has been working with us since 2015. He can run all the tests from the FCC and CE Mark - the entire 61000 series of tests and is getting pretty good at troubleshooting EMI problems. He's also getting pretty good at programming in Agilent VEE our automated Lab equipment software.
Pete Berquist -
Owner, Emissions Test Consulting
Senior EMC Engineer
After serving time in the Navy Pete worked for Hewlett Packard for 27 years and Intel for almost 5 years. Now he has his own Consulting Company, Emissions Test Consulting. At EMI Test Lab we call Pete our Guru even though he's too humble to say it about himself.
At HP he helped set up and run many EMC labs including training, calibrations, test software and worked to help acquire and maintain accreditation's. His duties at Intel were similar where he worked until semi-retiring back home to Loveland, Colorado.
He's helped us in too many ways to list. We wouldn't be where we are today without Pete's help!
Mila Lim-King - Owner
CFO
Mila received a Business Degree from
La Sallete University in Santiago City, Isabela - Phillippines. For the past 16 years, Mila has been working closely with our CPA to help keep the financials running smoothly.