On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:57:42 -0700, you wrote:

>Mike Harrison wrote:
>[...]
>> I've yet to see a 'formal' way of addressing this issue, but most makers 
>> of devboards etc. seem to
>> either skirt around it or just do the sensible thing and ignore it 
>> completely.
>> In practice you just stick a CE sticker on and nobody will care.
>
>
>I wonder how often this happens ("just stick a CE sticker"). How does your 
>(the reader's) company CE-certify their products? What would be a "normal" 
>procedure for a small engineering company to obtain CE certification? Do you 
>self-certify, or ship your device to a firm that certifies it for you?
>
>This is not idle curiosity, the topic is very relevant to what we're doing 
>right now.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Vitaliy 

Depends hugely on the type of product, what it's doing, frequency-wise, and you assesment of the
risks. 
Putting the CE mark on says effectively 'we believe this product conforms to all the relevant
directives'. 
You have to decide what you need to do to have the level of confidence you are comfortable with that
the product meets the requirements. This could range from anything between nothing and a
comprehensive test program at a test house. There are many steps inbetween. 
For example, One of my customers makes fire alarm sounders typically containing a 4MHz PIC on a
single-layer PCB in a plastic case. Several years ago we took a big box of current products to a
test house for a day of informal testing. From the results we got, we are confident that we don't
need to test similar future products as the ones we tested were hugely within margins, 
We did a product recently with a class-D amplifier, which I had EMC concerns over. 
We did 2 half-day sessions at a local EMC lab and made some mods to bring it to spec. We have the
receiver EMC plots to demonstrate compliance. (This is different and cheaper to a formal report form
a test house, the main difference being their liability for errors). 
Informal test house sessions can be a very productive way to test - you typically get access to all
the toys, and an engineer who knows how to drive them. You can test as many products you can in the
time, as well as making mods etc. If you have several products and a couple of people (one to do
mods to problem items while the other is testing other stuff) you can do a LOT of testing even in a
half day session.  


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