Is UL the same as CE?

[Nuuze]

Hi All,

I'm asking this question in regards of safety of the equipment and devices we spend a lot on money on and with all the money spent one of the things we sometimes overlooked is the safety of the item. UL (Underwriters Laboratories ) is the trusted source across the globe for product compliance and CE are the abbreviation of French phrase "Conformité Européene" which literally means "European Conformity".

So does this mean the two sources provide the same sort of certifications and test for things to be sold to the world and meet certain safety certifications?

[lvreefer]

UL is what you want to look for.
CE is a manufacture certification that means it is EU (European Union) standards. EU doesn't mean that it is also UL approved.

[BeanAnimal]

In a nutshell yes they are testing, standards, and compliance agencies. They may have different standards depending on the actual listing or product and in other cases they may be very similar.

There are plenty of other "trusted" agencies as well.

Here is the problem. There are boatloads of products that carry such listings that are in NO WAY safe. There are other boatloads of products that carry those listings even though they never passed the testing. They either piggybacked on an existing listing or flat out were never tested and are using the label anyway. This is a HUGE problem with the "global" manufacturing economy.

For example (your a networking guy). I can order 10,000 feet of twisted pair wire. I can order that wire with a cat3 twist configuration and a 50v insulation rating. BUT I can ask that it be labeled Cat6 300gigaherz PLENUM/AERIAL rated at 10,000V UL, CE, MSHA, etc. The China manufacturer could care less. His people at the local customs office could care less and because I am a con man, I could care less.... When the cable fails because it was pushed to it's labeled specs... My overseas holding company will be long gone, as will the trail of middlemen that had no idea they were involved in a scam.

This happens with everything from wire, to electronics components to industrial motors and equipment, heating elements, cordsets, power tools, you name it.... and it is happening with alarming regularity.

The scary part is that these bogus "listed" components are making their way into name brand products from MAJOR manufacturers, as they are buying from the same global market.

Long story short: A far east company basically STOLE an unpublished TYCO formula for capacitor dielectric. They preceded to make millions of electrolytic capacitors using the formula. They sold these capacitors to WORLDWIDE distributors. Because these caps were a penny or so less each than the WIMA, PANASONIC, etc caps. The marketplace gobbled them up.

Within 1 year the caps began to fail because the dielectric dried out (the formula was not correct!) and the power supplies and computer equipment that these knock off caps were used in began to fail. A LARGE PORTION OF IT IN CATASTROPHIC WAYS DUE TO EXPLODING CAPACITORS!

Why give you this specific example? Because, being an IT guy, you may remember the HUGE rash of exploding caps in ATX power supples and on ASUS, ABIT, TYAN, PC CHIPS and a dozen other motherboards a few years back. You may remember hearing about a failed satellites that was only on orbit for a year or less! You may have heard about the US, Australian and NATO forces scrambling to replace circuit boards that may fail during battle or flight! These were ALL due to said capacitors that were made from a stolen and botched TYCO formula. They were sold and labeled as military spec components with the appropriate labeling and documentation, when in fact it was all bogus :)

You will recognize these as PURPLE electrolytic capacitors that were used on products made in the late 90's and early 2001, 2002.

So yes it is good to see a label, but in this day and age you can not blindly trust it.

PHEW... that was long for such a simple question.

If I can find the article about the WHOLE ordeal I will post a link to it!

[BeanAnimal]

some general information:
http://www.ttiinc.com/object/ME_Zogbi_20040531.html

Here is a tie in for a bit more info from several sources:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/04/1751210&mode=thread&tid=137

The point being that THIS STUFF is supposed to be far beyond the little old UL or CE certification :) Hell this is the crap that goes into UL certified stuff. A lot of that UL listed stuff that used these components caught on fire!

How many undersized conductor, over lamped Christmas light strings have you see with a UL listing sticker. Scary stuff! What about some of the stuff in this hobby that is a deathtrap waiting to be plugged in, along with it's UL sticker?

[Nuuze]

That's great information BeanAnimal! I guess everyone in the business wants to get in on making a buck from all of us whether its reef related equipment to all the things around us regardless if it's safe or not. It almost seems like registration for their products they will be selling.

[BeanAnimal]

The world is full of scam artists. The sad part is that the MORE the scam artists get away with, the more the mostly honest people can push the envelope. The more the eBay and wal-mart mentality runs wild (cheaper with little or no regard to quality) the less the better products and companies have to do to be better. In other words the BEST does not really have to be the "BEST", it only has to be better than the next best thing!

Look at the IT industry and see all of the junk being peddled. Notice that even the BIG RELIABLE companies are starting to peddle the junk also? Cheap components with poor QC and non english speaking support. They are still better than the worst, but nowhere near what they could be. The average guy thinks he is entitled to wholesale pricing instead of retail. So the OEMS produce cheaper products to sell at that "wholesale" price level. the junk peddler then makes an even cheaper product... and the cycle starts over again. We are NOT in an age of innovation as much as we are in an age of the decline of stifled innovation to meet the demand of uninformed consumers and a global economy that could care less about quality.

Sorry for the rant.... It is a subject that bugs the snot out of me.