Michael,

Interesting points. I think I'll take your advice and stick with only split planing. I appreciate your comments.

What do you think of the barely perceivable metalized grid laminates that they sell to put on polycarbonate display covers? I'm sure its overkill for our application, but it might be useful for another market we may explore.

I think I discovered one mistake today by my expensive subcontractor. He specified some ferrite beads for the RS232 and RS485 connectors and for panel-mount components whose leads solder into the printed circuit board - ok. These components are switches and an ibutton reader.

However, he said to use the same 0805 SMT beads on the auxilary relay contacts available as an product option, connected back down the DC voltage input cable. It appears to me that due to the typical customer abuse of the relay option, these beads would likely become little more than fuses.

I'm no fan of auxiliary relays because customers always abuse them... but I'll always sell them a complete replacement unit when they smoke it with their dumb add-on circuitry. I try to sell them without the relay cabled at all and only swap the power/relay cable when someone askes for that feature.

aka j