Look in the archives of this discussion forum and you will see instances of occassions where no testing has been conducted. Test houses generally do not accept a Declaration of Conformity for any product unless further proof is available in the form of acceptable test results (from a 3rd party laboratory or approved in-house laboratory). This is not because they want more testing and more money but because it is well known that the CE marking process is abused by a large number of companies to different degrees. It is not uncommon for products to have a CE label attached but no documentation at all and these products are frequently found to be unsafe or to not comply with the EMC Directive. Some companies do the minimum possible i.e. make a quick assessment (not necessarily by a knowledgable person) and write a Declaration of conformity, other companies will do more in house testing, for example, hi-pot, leakage current and earth bond. Some companies employ safety engineers to perform testing and others use external test houses. For EMC it is more likely that nothing has been done as a large number of companies know that they will only get caught if their equipment is causing serious interference.
There is a sliding scale of testing that companies do, at one end nothing is done, costs are low and risks are high, at the other end full third party testing is conducted therefore costs are high but risks are low. It is up to buyers to decide where they want their end product to lie on that scale and to buy from companies that are at a similar position or better. They should request documentation to ensure that the equipment is suitably assessed to that level of risk. Some years ago before most of us knew what EMC meant, I came across a company that did not employ a safety engineer and did not use a test lab at all since it was cheaper to employ a lawyer with the knowledge to get them off any charges if their equipment was found to be unsafe! My advice, decide on your level of risk and choose your suppliers carefully. Glenn Moffat TUV International UK Tel: +44 121 634 8000 Fax: +44 121 634 8080 Hi all, Do all manufactures fulfill the EU-directives with testing in their own facilities or by an independent test lab? I guess the answer must be No. >From my time working in a test lab, my experience is that big companies like Alcatel, Siemens and so on, do the required testing according to relevant requirements. I also got the feeling that small companies (I do not generalize) where a bit "laid-back" and often put the CE-mark into the products without any tests or with a very limited test process. Should a system builder trust a Declaration of Conformity from a big manufacturer, without asking for test reports in order to verify compliance with relevant directives ? Would you sleep well at night, if you only trusted the CE-mark 100% and build a large broadband telecom system only based on the CE-mark without any further documentation? What is your opinion? Best regards Amund Westin, Oslo/Norway ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Michael Garretson: pstc_ad...@garretson.org Dave Heald davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: No longer online until our new server is brought online and the old messages are imported into the new server.
