Hi All, Guess I sure stirred the pot on this one. One side says you gotta be compliant even with a non-functional unit. The other side says it's OK to demo something that may or may not comply.
I am sure that we all try to build compliance in all the way back at the design stage. None of us (am I too optimistic here?) plan to design or build a non- compliant unit. If we have learned anything over the years, our products should be getting closer and closer to being compliant right from the start. Some of us, I am sure, take a new design from engineering and it passes the first time out. That said, we still get frustrated by timing and scheduling. Development is late and marketing is early. That show comes up sooner than you want it to and the dates for it will not move. The design is done and the product built. The last kinks are ironed out the day before it ships. Unfortunately, there were not enough functional units available for you to get it tested at the EMC lab. So you don't have that last final report that says "compliant". Or a last minute component change needed to happen and it was not one of the components tested in the weeks you had the unit. So here you sit. You now need to make that judgement call and say that placing a CE mark on the unit can or cannot be done. Can I? Should I? What if I do? What if I don't? Finally, to let you all know what happened to the product that started all this. We shipped non-compliant to the show. We also scrambled to get that non-CE marked component to become compliant and marked. A compliant replacement com- ponent is being shipped to our UK office. After the show, our product will pass through our UK office to have the compliant part installed. The usual required tests will be performed and the product will be CE marked. Once this is complete the product will be shipped to the customer for Beta evaluation. Ah, the worrld is full of compromises. Thanks to all for your interesting comments. Regards, Scott Douglas [email protected]
