Regarding Requirement for Hi pot & Leakage Current test Station Set-up

[WireyGinger2877]

Hello All,

I am fairly new to this website. I am working on setting-up the Hipot & Leakage current set-up in our manufacturing line and I was wondering if somebody could help me out regarding the requirement for setting up test station for Hipot & Leakage current test station. What mainly I am hoping to get is the test station distance requirement which I read in few places is from 4ft to 10 ft from other station. Could anyone here guide me here where does the 10ft requirement and 4 ft requirement comes from? Is there a standard particularly talks about the distance of test station shall be 10 ft or 4ft distance from other test station?

thank you for your valuable time and help here.

best regards,
wireyginger

 

[Miner]

I am not familiar with the IEC 60601 requirements for Hipot, but am familiar with UL requirements. I have never seen a requirement for a minimum distance between test stations. From where did you hear of this?

 

[WireyGinger2877]

Hello,

Thank you for your response. I was looking one of the manual of HIPOT equipment and that's how I got to know that there is distance requirement. Have anyone of you ever experienced or know about it? I believe when they do the ETL certification audit for 60601 they check on of those requirement. But again I could be understanding something wrong here.

Again, Thanks for your input.

 

[Tagin]

I also have not heard of this distance requirement. We get ETL audits quarterly and never has this been mentioned by an ETL auditor over many years.

Maybe it only applies to very high-voltage equipment (which we do not deal with)?

 

[WireyGinger2877]

Thank you Taginf or your response. What voltage are working at? I am at 4000 V - 5000 V

 

[Tagin]

Thank you Taginf or your response. What voltage are working at? I am at 4000 V - 5000 V

Hipot voltages are 2100-2500V. DUT voltages are 120-240.

I looked at a few hipot manuals online, and some have vague recommendations to "maintain distance", and use things like remote switches to activate the hipot test, barriers to prevent people entering the test area, and other such things to improve safety. But none that I saw made any reference to standards or requirements. Here's one such page: Ideas for Improving Hipot Safety.

 

[WireyGinger2877]

Thanks for the link! Now it makes sense. I just picked a below sentence from the link you provided and see below highlighted it says if we have test enclosure then distance requirement is not needed.

The user must ensure personnel are outside the test area, minimum 3.0m (10 feet), when high voltage is energized unless a suitable high voltage test enclosure is used.

As per the standard goes same link provides "EN / IEC / UL 61010-:2010" and "OSHA" I believe these are standard which provides safety guidelines for high voltage station.

I believe we should be good as long as we have a test enclosure.

thanks for all your help!