Well-protected, Even Against Invisible Foes

"This TV isn't working fine. There must be an interference of some kind."

If, on seeing the on-screen picture disturbed by strange lines, or hearing the sound start to crackle, you ever happened to stand up from your sofa and say these words, you might also have wondered, since no mobile phones or radios were switched on close to the TV, what in the world could be creating that interference.

Well, perhaps we can help you solve the mystery. As a first thing, we suggest you check if you have, in your home, one or more of the following objects, as each of them could be a source of interference: a doorbell, a toaster oven, an electric blanket, a touch-controlled lamp…

Surprised? And we stopped the list early. One could wonder, and perhaps you are, right now, how we can manage to ever watch a movie on TV, or talk on our mobile phone for that matter, since we're constantly surrounded by potential sources of interference. That's the same curiosity that brought us to ask an explanation for how we manage to use all these tools despite interferences: and we asked Temas, a Company who's been fighting these mysterious, invisible foes for thirty years now, and is specialized in designing and producing EMI gaskets.

For a start, we need to understand what electro-magnetic interference, or EMI for short, actually is, and why it is a problem. Interference is, generically speaking, an external radiation which disturbs, interrupts, slows, or somehow impairs, the functioning of an electrical circuit. This radiation may come from man-made objects, such as the ones we listed, or from natural objects (even from the Sun!) The real problem lies actually in the fact that, since the Seventies, the proliferation of digital technologies in our very homes has constantly been multiplying the potential sources of such interference: which of course resulted in worsening the problem, requiring on one side specific legislation (currently active, in fact) and on the other the development of protective technologies for threatened circuits.

Among the most cost-effective and simple solutions to this problem lie, for example, EMI gaskets, which have the additional advantage of being easy to understand by a simple comparisons with gaskets which are perhaps more familiar to us, like for example those used in plumbing. A Gasket's purpose is simply, as we know, to isolate two systems from one another, not allowing whatever circulates in the first (say, the plumbing under our washbasin) to enter the second (say, our bathroom's floor). Once this simple comparison is understood, so is the function of EMI gaskets: stopping external radiation, whatever the source, from attacking and thus interfering with the circuits we want to protect. A simplicity which, of course, becomes far less trite when we analyze the specific technologies used in building these gaskets: the materials needed are technologically very advanced, to allow for a thin layer of what may be, in different cases, metal, silicon, or foam, to effectively protect the underlying circuits. The advantage lies, though, besides the obvious one of protection, in the ease of use of gaskets (which as we proved is totally intuitive) and in their flexibility as tools, which makes them suitable for dozens different applications.

Let's remember it, next time our TV seems to be acting strange…