Compliance & Precision News Round-Up - Issue 45

This issue covers:

Planned obsolescence to become obsolete?
Sentinel safety testers from Clare
Vision for the future of appliance manufacturing
See us at the Hire Convention 2015 in September
Q&A

Planned obsolescence to become obsolete?

Interesting news from France, where recent legislation is designed to curb the practice of planned obsolescence in electrical and electronic products.

Rather than issuing broad laws mandating that certain products last for a specific number of years, the new French legislation requires that appliance manufacturers and vendors become more transparent about intended product lifespans.

In addition, all French appliance manufacturers are now required to inform vendors how long spare parts for a given product will be produced. Vendors are then required to inform buyers in writing, and failure to do so can result in up to 15,000 euros in fines.

It is also reported that next year the French government will introduce additional measures that will require manufacturers to replace or repair faulty appliances free of charge for the first two years after they’ve been purchased, in what appears to be a mandatory warranty. Full story is here.

Sentinel safety testers from Clare

Significant time and cost saving benefits are provided by the new Sentinel series of bench-top Hipot/flash testers, which deliver improved type testing during product development or enhanced compliance testing in a laboratory environment.

The Sentinel 200, 500 and 501 electrical safety testers enable manufacturers to check their products in-house to ensure compliance with the relevant international technical conformance standards such as EN 60598, UL 1598, IEC and CSA C22.2 before being sent to third party test/approval houses. This can reduce product time-to-market, saving time and costs in the process.

The Sentinel series is ideal for R&D facilities and compliance laboratories, while design, quality assurance, and manufacturing and production engineers will also benefit from the easy-to-use safety test features.

The fast, safe and accurate testing of high voltages up to 5kV AC and 6kV DC is provided across the range while accurate testing up to 500 VA AC power output - allowing for 100mA tripping currents, a requirement in many standards - is available on the Sentinel 500 and 501 units. The latter also provides earth bond/insulation resistance testing.

Adjustable ramp and hold times (0.1 – 999.9s) allow the test time to be set to rise appropriately to the correct output voltage for compliance with test standards and to reduce the risk of damage to the equipment under test.

The Sentinel series offers fully automatic testing and remote control, enabling up to 100 test conditions to be saved and recalled for single test purposes. For sequential testing requirements, manual test settings can be linked together to create up to 100 automatic test sequences, enabling simple recall for repeat testing.

Further advanced features include an integrated sweep function which plots measured values, current or resistance values against the test time - represented as a trace graph - enabling changes in the measured values to be recorded throughout the test period rather than as a single value at the end.

A remote start terminal and signal I/O port allows for remote starting, safety interlocking and PLC control while an enhanced safety feature will automatically cut off the output voltage within 150µs where normal output voltages are detected or when the upper or lower current trip limits are reached while the device is under test.

More details here.

Vision for the future of appliance manufacturing

The European Committee of Domestic Equipment Manufacturers (CECED) has set out a vision for the industry in a new policy document.

Its proposal, ‘Home Appliance 2025’, sets out a series of forward looking ambitions, as well as highlighting the current contribution of home appliance manufacturing to Europe and the drivers and inhibitors of business growth in the EU.

CECED calculates that home appliances contribute one million jobs and €53.3 billion per annum in GDP to the European economy. In support of this contribution, the organisation has launched a ‘call to action’ on jobs, growth and competitiveness towards European policymakers at a high-level event in Brussels.

The report is backed by 19 major European appliance manufacturers, who used the launch event to voice their 2025 vision to be “an innovative home appliance sector in Europe enabled to advance sustainable lifestyles, achieve global leadership and provide skills and growth”.

Dr Reinhard Zinkann, CEO of Miele and President of CECED, said: “We hope our ‘Home Appliance 2025: Call to Action’ can act as a catalyst for an ongoing dialogue with the European Commission, the European Parliament and other stakeholders on how to maintain and maximise the benefits home appliance manufacturing provides to the European economy and the lives of all its 500 million citizens.” Details here.

See us at the Hire Convention 2015 in September

We will exhibiting at the Hire Convention 2015 (stand B34) on 22-23 September 2015 at the Holywell Park Conference Centre, Loughborough, UK. On display will be the Safecheck 8 and B255 electrical safety testers, specifically designed for the hire industry.

For all upcoming Seaward events visit our events page

Q&A

Every month we'll be including a commonly asked application question. Here’s the first in the series...

Q: I wish to use our HAL101 to determine at what voltage my item breaks down by manually increasing the test voltage, can this be done?

A: Yes, all of the HAL models can be set to manually increase test voltages, this can be done either as part of a sequence or in manual mode. When setting up the test parameters in either mode, scroll to the ramp up time and rotate the wheel clockwise in order set this to VAR. This will disable the test hold time and the test will now be completely controlled by the operator. Maximum voltage, trip level, ramp down time and start control can still be configured.

When performing the test, enable the start condition as normal, pressing the green button for example, then use the scroll wheel to increase the test voltage in 10V steps, by rotating clockwise. To terminate the test either breakdown will be achieved or press the green button to manually end the test.

Ramp time set to Variable in test sequence.