Hello friends! Guess where I am today. I'm at the UL lab in Melville, New York,
which is just outside of New York City, and today we're going to learn some really
cool things about how electronics, electricity, and power is tested here at the Melville lab.
So come on, let's go check it out.
OK friends, so I'm in Melville at the Power Distribution lab and I'm here with Ed.
Say "hi", Ed. - But I'm Ed! You're not Ed
Oh "Hi Ed"! - So tell me how long have you been here at UL?
I've been here quite a while... (how long?) I've been here, well let's
put it this way when the Lord said let there be light
who do you think did the investigation?
When Ben Franklin and I were
inventing the lightning rod and running a kite up with a key, we figured out
that cloud-to-cloud lightning strikes could put a big impulse on the power lines,
come on down, and give you a problem with your computer or your Xbox...of course we
didn't have an Xbox back then, but that's okay. And you have your power strips that
usually help you protect from those power surges, and the little device
that's inside that is a small device called an MOV or a metal oxide varistor.
This little guy is going to give you the protection that you want to keep the
insulation system in a good safe condition, and prevent fires.
-Now why is this testing and everything that you do here, so important?
This is designed to come and allow us to evaluate the products so
that the MOV - the device - can be matched to the proper application.
If it's not, this test will demonstrate what could happen.
- Great. Is it is it alright if we run the test? - Sure, let's go ahead.
Right now we have a surge generator that's going
bring a surge on the power line, and go right to that component,
and we're going to cover it with cheese cloth to demonstrate any fire.
Right now we're applying an impulse of about 6,000 volts, 3,000 amperes
to this product to see how it reacts.
Wow! Okay, now why did it do that? - The energy contained within the impulse
was more than what this was designed for. They normally would not react like this,
now you know the limitations of this particular product. - Wow! Okay...it's all for safety.
Perfect! Thank you very much, Ed! - Oh, you're welcome!
So I'm now here in the core electrical lab and I'm here with John, say "hi" John.
This is how you learn. - No, John, that's my line!
-Oh, sorry Dennis. - Just say "hi" John - Hi John!
So John, tell me, what do you do here at UL?
I test appliances, appliance controls...controls are the things that are inside the
appliance like the guts of the appliance that make the appliance work.
Now why is that testing so important? - It's important because the
appliances can have things happen to them that might make them unsafe and the
control is supposed to protect the appliance but also protect your house.
It's supposed to protect your house from something that could heat up and
catch fire or something that could shock you
that if you touch the outside of the appliance it could shock you, so we want
to make sure that the designers of the appliances make them safe from shock and
fire hazards. -Perfect! Now what kind of test setup do you have here?
Well I'm testing a component today, a switch that comes from an appliance,
and we're using a robot arm to move the switch back and forth.
The switch gets mounted in a vise, and then I use the robot to turn it on and off.
In order to make the robot work I have to type in computer code.
It's sort of like learning a new language. It's not exactly English.
It looks like English but I had to study from the robot manual before I was able to make it work.
The reason why we're flipping the switch on and off is called and endurance test.
The appliance, you can imagine, throughout the course of the
life of the appliance, it's going to get turned on and off many many times.
So we want to make sure the switch can survive the life cycle of that appliance.
So in this case it could be running for 30,000 times or for a 100,000 thousand times.
So John, why do you use these kind of light bulbs that we see here?
Actually, Dennis, today I didn't have to use these light bulbs but I chose them as a
tribute to UL because they look kind of old-timey light bulbs.
UL has actually been testing products for over 120 years, so I wanted to choose
something that that sort of a tribute to that. And it's kind of to show a balance of how
we have been testing products for over 120 years,
but we also are testing the latest technology today.
This is excellent, John! Thank you so much for your time and for explaining all of this to us!
You're welcome, Dennis.
So I'm in another section of the power distribution lab and I'm here with Jim. Say "hi" Jim.
"Hi Jim!" - Why do you always go...I don't understand...
So Jim what do we have here? What is it set up?
This is is a test demonstration how a circuit breaker works and how it's supposed to
protect the wires in your wall from overheating and starting a fire.
- What do you do here, specifically, at UL? - I test circuit breakers,
electric vehicle charges, ground fault circuit interrupters, switches, relays...
...anything that has to do with high power turning stuff on and off to make sure that it works safely,
and that you don't have a fire or a shock hazard. - Now why is this testing so important?
Because people are misunderstanding what circuit breakers do.
A lot of times they think it's people protection and they're
actually protection for wires in your walls, and if they're not used properly
or setup properly you can start a fire in your house. - Oh really? So if I were to
like grab a fork and put it in a socket, this won't protect me?
No it won't, because it's not a GFCI circuit breaker.
This is made for overcurrent protection. It has two bi-metals in them, and when the
bi-metals get hot, they open up which causes the circuit breaker to turn, just off like that.
But it's mainly to protect this wire here. And if this wire gets too hot?
It will start the insulation in your house on fire.
Here we have common household wire creating a short circuit on a 20 amp circuit breaker.
We have 5000 amps at 240 volts going through this breaker. When we start the test,
breaker should trip and the wire should stay intact, the cotton
should not go on fire, and that will show that the product did it's job.
And you see, we had a failure. What we had here, the circuit breaker worked,
the wire turned off but the arc shoots were a little too big, so the spark
went too far, which set the cotton on fire. That would be considered a failure
This is a 7 and a half-inch piece of standard copper 12 gauge wire
that you would find in your home, and what we're doing is we're creating a dead short circuit
across the 5,000 amps, 240 volt circuit.
Now you see how electricity...
You see why circuit breakers and fuses are necessary.
All that's left of that copper wire is just the sleeving.
We had an excellent day today here at the UL
lab in Melville, New York, where we learned so much about power and
electricity and some of the tests that are done on products that we use every single day.
It's not only very important for us to test these things, but as you can see,
it was a whole lot of fun! For UL Safety Smart, I'm Dennis Avelar
and That's How You Learn.
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