Not necessarily, I worked for a design house for many years (until a few months ago) and got embroiled in this many times. CE "Certificates" mean nothing in essence, as you can self certify. So in reality you can do nothing and still sell your product, often even with the CE mark on it if you believe that it is truely compliant. The problem is that you can be called up, by anyone, on its compliance and then it is up to you to demonstrate its compliance (usually by pulling a technical report out from under the desk). You can have fun E-Mailing companies for their CE certificate / technical file on their products and see what gets sent to you - I used to do this regularly with competitors to a design I was working on for a client mainly to see what standard their product was tested to as a guide for myself!
The most common route followed for EU is to get a final pre-production prototype ready and get it EMC tested (Radiated / Conducted emissions and Susceptability). Then, if thats all good and if its a physical product for consumer use (rather than a PCB to go into something else / a kit etc) then also get it Safety Tested (I handled a custom LED lamp design which turned into a nightmare here...). This safety testing can vary a lot based on the EN category (which are fairly broad - lab (EN61010) / industrial / medical (EN60601) / consumer / Audio Visual / Railway / lighting) it falls into (this also affects the EMC testing as different limits for different types of product). Then you are pretty much good to go, take out some libility insurance and your golden. Expect to pay £2500 for EMC and about the same for safety. Get a friend in a university / academic institution who has access to the standards library to download you the EN standards you want for free (otherwise they can be £100's). Again, you can skip all this and write your own tech report - if you get called up do the testing then, if it failes on EMC you can just say "whoops" - pull it from sale and re-start selling with it fixed. There is rarely recalls for EMC issues, and it will only be your competitors that haul you up on it usually (unless it is literally broadcasting like a beacon). If it fails on safety you have a bit more of an issue. Most of safety testing is looking at the flamability of the design / materials (they will set fire to the prototype / burn holes in it during testing) and the VDE / UL approval of Critical Components (bits with mains going into them / user interactive bits). It is usually about 70% document exercise / tickboxes and 30% trying to tip it over / burn it / throw it at the ground and see if live parts become visible. They will check PCB gerbers for creepage and clearance distances of tracks too, and measure with thermocouples all possible hot spots (transformer cores / user touch areas) and block off fans to see if it burns up with no air flow. All in all fairly logical stuff but your paying for the boringness of it all / letterhead. US testing is quite different - different EMC limits (often simpler - you dont test susceptability iirc, as if everything complies with radiated emissions then why would there be a problem with received erronious emissions?) and of course all different safety compliance standards - but the process is much the same - though not "self certified" - you have to get UL or MET approved. A good test house will quiz you on your intended markets and can do all the testing to both limits at once and will charge you for each regions compliant report. So I Would argue US is for sure just as hard, if not harder than EU as you have to get it tested from the get go... Oh, and you dont need to worry about WEEE unless your selling over a certain quantity or weight, but all you need to do anyway is provide a return address people can ship stuff back to you at the end of its life. As an aside, bespoke items dont need testing nearly as much / at all - so "Custom made to order" is a good get out for low volume / Etsy kind of things. Just wait for the kitemark to come back what with brexit... - Alex On Friday, 1 November 2019 21:04:45 UTC, newxito wrote: > > Selling electronics seems to be very complex in the EU. Even for small > series you apparently need the CE certificate... and many other > paperwork. You even have to register and pay for future recycling. And I > think is better to have a good insurance because of the “product liability”. > Selling kits seems to be a little bit easier. Anyway, I have decided to > never ever sell any self-designed/self-made electronics. > > If someone is interested, google for "auf dem Weg zum eigenen Produkt", > there is a very informative drawing from the German “Make”, if you click > on the icons you get a more detailed explanation ... if you understand G > erman :-) > >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/40f75fbd-d38c-423a-a52f-b1397a7770c5%40googlegroups.com.
