Today’s infotainment is simply a bastardised version of the oldest form of education - storytelling. Until the popular narrative changes to something closer to ‘truth’ (if anything we are further away from that touch stone than in my living memory) then we are heading in a purposefully delusional direction
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I still wonder how things are meant:
…“This new mark incorporates the same standards as the EU version – but only UK-accredited testing facilities will be able to validate it.”…
The CE marking is done by the manufacturers their selves, so not sure what is needed to acquire a UKCA marking. CE is a statement from the manufacturer that the product is developed and produced according to regulatory standards. So in practice, testing in an accredited (EU) test lab is for many products simply not done to have a CE marking on a product.
For e.g. the USA, my experience is that a UL certified body/person can do a verification/validation at the manufacturers place (outside the USA) and confirm compliance.
For Brasil, a Brasil accredited body in Brasil can do the formal documentation verification to confirm compliance to the Brazilian INMETRO.
These are all activities outside the country of destination.
From that point of view, I think a non UK manufacturer could not even ship their product to the UK for verification by a UK accredited lab. As it does not have a UKCA marking, the product will be stopped at the border by customs.
Does that mean ‘the facilities have to be accredited and to be in the UK’ or does it mean ‘the facilities have to be accredited by the UK’. If the latter then a trade agreement with, say, the EU could include a clause which formally accredits all the EU test houses.
The marking is, but manufacturers can, and often do, also use external test houses to actually do the product testing. If the test house is accredited then an approval from them gives the manufacturer a strong defence in any court case over an infringement of the standards. I happen to know a guy who works for an accredited test house which tests a lot of UK-manufactured audio power amps, including quite a few valve ones.
They might well do product testing to cover what is essentially a third party insurance risk. Is it actually required for day a CE mark? Will it be required for a UK mark?
Last time I looked CE compliance was still self-certified, so external testing not required, but as VB says anyone who has any sense also submits to an approved testing facility as well.
No it isn’t (or at least it wasn’t under CE rules).
But the way Trading Standards explained it to me was that if a manufacturer was accused of non-compliance in court then the court would accept an approval from an accredited test house as proof of compliance, unless the accuser could prove otherwise. The onus would be on the accuser to do that and the court would start from a position of scepticism. If, on the other hand, you didn’t have a test house approval then the onus would be on you to prove that you had complied and the court would need some serious (=expensive) convincing.
So, as Paul says, manufacturers who are large enough to be able to afford it get test house approval. And although I obviously can’t go into detail, my mate says some of them struggle, technically, more than you might imagine.
Mains DC blockers are a depressingly simple example of an acceptably safe set of products that struggle to get approval with test houses. Most are based on a large amount of low VDC electrolytic capacitance (e.g. 1mF / 25VDC) in series for high ripple current capacity - AC passes, DC doesn’t. They’ll never see more than maybe 1.5VDC for an instant (usually 1/1000th or less) before whatever bypass diodes present kick in, but testers expect to see X or Y rated stuff in mains applications, and miss the fact that that applies only to parallel circuits L-N / L-E. If a cap fails then the worst that happens is some noise and smoke (cap as self-indicating fuse mode 
).
True, it is possible to envisage scenarios where disaster can overtake - but significantly in this context it’s no more likely than most other components potentially present in mains powered devices - but (unlike something like, say, an axial resistor) these happen have a voltage value printed on 'em, and so computer says “no” (sometimes…).
I guess testing houses have to cover themselves, too, so when in doubt…
FWVLIW, I’ve used my DIY DC blockers 24/7/365 for 20 years now, and check them annually - not a single failure of any kind, ever.
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I absolutely agree. It could well be the case that test houses aren’t appropriate (small A) for any product which is custom-built or unusually low-volume. In the end anyone who manufactured new products under the CE scheme had to cross-check their design against the force-of-law wording of ‘the harmonised standards’ and if it was compliant but they couldn’t get a test-house to approve it then they had to put the CE sticker on and shoulder the risk themselves. I don’t know if the standards mandate X or Y ratings for DC blocker capacitors but if they don’t then, in principle at least, it ought to be possible to talk a test house into OK-ing non-rated ones. They can be inflexible though. The tester I know once told me that of all the UK electronic equipment houses the one he worked for was more-or-less the only one that was prepared to check valve amps.
If the gear was new but the design wasn’t compliant with the standards then a manufacturer (strictly speaking whoever ‘brought the product to market’) would be in a bind. The standards are international so it’s the IEC that they’d need to lobby to get them changed. Good luck with that.
All that said, motor run capacitors are typically wired in series with the mains supply (and a motor winding) and I don’t think they’re routinely X- or Y-rated yet someone somehwere must accept them. They’re film rather than electrolytic and seem to max out at 0.1mF so you’d need 10 in parallel for 1mF. The array would be physically quite large and the cost wouldn’t leave any change out of £100 but that might be easier than trying to finesse the regs.
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I have amps full of motor run capacitors in the power supply of my amps, they have a CE* badge
*Coco Exempt
There are certainly a number of commercial DC blockers on the market, so whether some got type approval, or makers simply rolled the dice I don’t know. All I know is a couple of manufacturers I knew well both prototyped them around the same time and then pulled-out when compliance certs proved unobtainable.
I never took it that far - it’s a difficult thing to sell as a product because almost no customer has a clue what they actually do, but just buys them in the blind expectation that a buzzing noise from their hifi will go away… DC offset is the least common cause of such noises IME, so people assume the blocker is foo…
I like the sonic effect personally - transformers still saturate from offset without necessarily producing audible magnetostriction, so stopping the offset can still improve efficiency, and thus sound.
To be fair some commercial blocker designs can’t supply enough current to be fully efficient. Those can ruin sound.
I’ve also encountered people who simply prefer a vague-sounding hifi system, and so hate what I see as benefits… Nowt so queer as folk.
CE marking, yes. But Paul’s issue was with test houses expecting mains-connected capacitors also to be X- or Y-rated. I suspect the ones in your kit aren’t mains-connected.
Whoosh!
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It’s not about control, but about cunt role.
Ha, love the double gammon helping from the flood water.
Boozer has had that paint job for over the 26 years I’ve lived down here. It remains an excellent repellent.
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It gets worse when the world/euros are on