At 09:09 -0700 28/8/08, Ted Eckert wrote: <SNIP>
> >An example would be a commercial air conditioner. Would such a >product fall under a product specific standard under the Low Voltage >Directive or general standards under the Machinery and Pressure >Directives? It may depend on the design of the product. It will indeed depend on the design of the product. Such a system fits the definition of being 'an assembly of linked parts, at least one of which moves', and hence is potentially within the scope of the Machinery Directive. However, the Machinery Directive has an exclusion for equipment where the risks are primarily electrical in origin and which are also covered by the LVD. Hence, for a small air conditioning unit where the risks are primarily electrical, only the LVD need be applied. For a large commercial unit, where there are significant mechanical risks as well, then both the LVD and Machinery Directives need to be applied. Drawing the line between products where this exclusion can be applied and those for which both directives apply is difficult, and it's notable that for many manufacturers this will be the most significant change which will affect them with the introduction of the new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC in 2010. Apart from becoming clearly mutually exclusive with the LVD (so one will only apply one or the other, and never both) the scope of the exclusion which permits products to be covered by the LVD rather than the Machinery Directive is much more narrowly drawn in the new directive. There are a considerable number of products currently on the market and which are attested only to the LVD which will unequivocally fall within the scope of 2006/42/EC when it comes into force. As it happens, commercial air conditioning units are among them. Such systems are, incidentally, unlikely to ever come within the scope of the PED since there is an exclusion from the PED for equipment which presents a low class of pressure related risk and which is also covered by the LVD or the Machinery Directives (among others). >At first glance, IEC 60335-2-40 would appear to only cover household >products. However, the scope states "Appliances not intended for >normal household use but which nevertheless may be a source of >danger to the public, such as appliances intended to be used by >laymen in shops, in light industry an don farms, are within the >scope of this standard." Except for the highly unusual circumstances which apply under the Construction Products Directive, it is wrong to rely on the scope statements of standards in order to determine whether or not a product is within the scope of a particular directive. Quite apart >from the fact that the legal status of the directives is quite different to that of the standards, to be blunt the accuracy of the work of many of standards committees falls short of that which would be considered desirable in making a legally important distinction such as this. This tends to be less true for LVD standards than for the Machinery Directive, but nevertheless, standards committees do not (and probably should not) primarily write the scopes of their standards with this purpose in mind and so that's not how they should be applied by standards users. I tend to approach this from the perspective of having to justify to a court how I made a claim that any given product was safe. In these circumstances (and particularly in a civil case), I think it's unlikely that one could rely on the harmonisation (or otherwise) of a particular standard under a particular directive as evidence that its requirements should or should not be applied. If there no better yardstick to use as a measure of what constitutes the 'state of art' of safety for a particular piece of equipment then you need to apply the most appropriate standard you can find whether to not is is harmonised under the directives which actually apply. Putting it another way, compliance with the directives is a criminal matter so not applying a particular standard can be justified if it's not listed against a particular directive. However, if someone gets hurt and you find yourself having to justify your failure to apply a safety measure identified in a standard and which might have prevented the injury, the fact that the standard was not harmonised under the applicable directives is fairly unlikely to impress the court, particularly in a civil case. Regards Nick. - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to emc-p...@ieee.org Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas emcp...@ptcnh.net Mike Cantwell mcantw...@ieee.org For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org David Heald: emc-p...@daveheald.com All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
