Agency Approvals

Product certification to international safety standards is a critical step to successfully market and sell products worldwide. Safety Agency Approval marking of components and complete stand alone power supply units is the passport to the world.

Safety Standards are designed to ensure safety of products, activities and processes, and to assure users and consumers that a particular device is safe as designed and manufactured. Safety and regulatory agencies are mainly concerned with shock hazard, fire hazard and EMI/RFI when evaluating transformers and power supplies.

The purpose of international standards is to ensure that there are common rules for certification and testing to look after safety, labeling and customer’s needs and immediate environment

Across national borders, certification is an assurance that a product meets applicable safety standards, even if it was originally designed for different voltage supply, frequency, or environment. Worldwide product safety markings will reduce manufacturer liability and increase product acceptance by corporate and government customers and provide shorter time to market.

There are a great number of organizations writing product safety standards, such as IEC, EN, ANSI, BS, DIN/VDE, GOST, JIS and SAA.

At a global level, the European Community, under the umbrella organization International Electro technical Commission (IEC), has been unifying standards for many years. The United States (UL) and Canada (CSA) have also been moving towards the IEC standards. This trend towards harmonized, unified standards, makes it possible to get worldwide product certification from one supervisory body, such as UL, CSA, TUV etc.

Product Testing
Safety testing of electrical products is complex: components are inspected for voltage ratings, isolation and spacing, enclosure and chassis design, temperature ratings, grounding, over current protection, short circuiting, labeling, and other parameters.

These additional parameters depend upon the type of equipment and the application. Most countries have safety standards written specifically for a particular type of device or application as well as common requirements within a particular country's standards.

Development engineers and regulatory groups must ensure that a product is designed to meet the safety standards for the intended markets.

Approving Agencies
There are as many approving agencies as there are countries. Historically, each country established or authorized an organization to perform safety testing. Each organization has a particular mark or label that is used to indicate that a product has been tested, recognized, or listed.

In many countries, safety certification is done through a government body. Other countries have authorized independent testing organizations or laboratories to perform safety testing and certification. Finally, many countries are joining together under unified standards that permit products to be certified to one standard that is accepted across national boundaries.

In the past, selling a product in a specific country often meant expensive testing and certification to that country's standard. It was not unusual for a product to be listed or tested to many standards: UL (United States), CSA (Canada), TUV (Germany), JET (Japan) and many others. Such testing and paperwork added considerably to the cost of doing business internationally.

Today, there is an increasing trend towards unified standards. The European Community, under the umbrella organization International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), has been unifying standards for many years. The United States (UL) and Canada (CSA) have also been moving towards the IEC standards.

The adoption of CE Marking by the European Union removes much of the red-tape and complexity of dealing with separate standards in Europe and world-wide. However, the individual "harmonized standards" may be more stringent than the individual national standards that they have replaced. The CE marking is a manufacturers marking, which guarantees that the product is designed, manufactured and tested in accordance with all the relevant directives.

The Testing Process
In order to certify a product for sale internationally, the applicable standards must first be researched. In many cases, multiple standards will apply.

Engineering must then design the equipment to meet all of the desired standards. A prototype or initial production unit is submitted to the testing organization. Many testing laboratories are now certified to test products to a number of international standards.

The testing organization will test the product (often this testing is destructive) and either certify the device or report on any deficiencies. After one or more redesign and limited retest cycles, the product is certified or listed. Any product changes that occur after the fact must be submitted to the testing laboratory for review and retest if required.

The manufacturer incurs substantial costs to certify a product for safety.

• Many engineering and regulatory hours are required to properly research, design, and guide a product through the safety testing process.
• Safety certification is often a critical path task in the product development cycle. This can slow the time to market, especially if redesign is required.
• A destructive test may be required to certify a product.
• Testing laboratory costs for labor and project fees can be substantial.

While some manufacturers have the expertise and manpower to seek agency approvals for their systems, many others find the cost and complexity of dealing with approvals for each individual component and sub-system to be overwhelming.

ISO 9000 Certification
Many customers have begun to insist on the quality documented through ISO-9000 certification. Such certification does not ensure safety or regulatory compliance but does indicate that the manufacturer adheres to industry standard levels of quality.

Powertronix quality assurance program starts at the first customer contact and includes sales, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, test, packing, administration, accounting, customer service and after sales support. Powertronix is committed to total customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance by providing safe, cost effective, creative Power Solutions and supply products with on-time deliveries, by a knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff.

POWERTRONIX – Your Power Solution Specialist
In many cases, manufacturers find that outsourcing design and manufacturing of subassemblies to Powertronix can greatly simplify the safety certification process.

• Eliminating redesign cycles, substantially reduces certification time and costs.
• Providing test data, safety documentation and construction descriptions required by regulatory agencies
• An outsourced sub-system, supplied with certification or listing, minimizes engineering and regulatory labor.
• Outsourcing manufacturing of subassemblies can substantially improve the time to market.

While Powertronix design and manufacturing can take the complete Power Solution through safety agency tests and verification, our customers can focus on finalizing the design and completion of their final product or system.

POWERTRONIX Toroidal Transformers and Power Supplies are Safety approved, which speeds up our customer’s time to market, as well as reduces the cost to obtain final end product safety approval.

POWERTRONIX safety approvals
Powertronix has Safety Certificates from both North American and International Safety Standards, such as:

• UL506 - General Purpose Transformers File #
• UL1411 – Audio, Radio and
• UL60950 – Information Technology Equipment
• UL60601 – Medical and Dental Equipment
• EN60601 – Medical and Dental Equipment for European installations
• EN60950 – Information Technology for European installations

For more info, contact Powertronix here.
Alternately, you can email us at: Sales@powertronix.com