Just a viewpoint from one of those commercial test houses. In Europe the requirements of the Low Voltage Directive are that a product must be safe, be constructed in accordance with good engineering practice and comply with the principal elements of the safety objectives detailed. It does not say that a product must conform to any standard, it does however say that a product complying with a harmonised standard will be deemed to comply with the safety provisions of the Directive. Therefore the law in Europe has no requirements for any production line hipot or other testing provided you can show evidence that you have done all that is necessary to show the product is safe. Under the legal requirements it is possible to deviate from any production line testing detailed in the standards whether it is in an informative or normative or any other type of Annex.
In practise it is difficult to imagine any way of ensuring an electrical product is safe without some form of end of line testing. Many test houses operate certification schemes which give additional confidence to buyers that a product is safe (or whatever other thing the marks are perceived to show by the buyer). Most test marks are private marks belonging to a company, there is one exception and that is the German GS mark. This is a Government mark and forms part of the German Safety Law, it is not (and never has been) Mandatory, the mark is issued by the TUVs and their appropriate logo will appear alongside the GS mark. This mark is well established in Germany and other parts of Europe. Regarding other issues brought up on this subject, by choosing a test house carefully, it should be possible to obtain virtually all international certification necessary through one body, possibly by using the CB scheme (which is not a true certification scheme). This has cost and time benefits and should simplify the process. I expect I have just told you all what you already know, but I hope it helps. Best regards Glenn Moffat TUV International UK TUV Rheinland/Berlin-Brandenburg Group Ltd www.uk.tuv.com ------------------------------------------- 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.
