William Bross wrote:
> Just two small problems from my side.  I've got half a dozen similar
> products doing similar tasks, both UL / ETL approved and none have
> ever had production line testing specified.

That only means you got away with it, not that it was the right thing to do
or a good idea.

I guess this comes down to what exactly you specify to your customer.  If
you specify isolation, you need to be testing for it in production.  Testing
the lab sample only proves the design is correct.  It does nothing to prove
that each individual unit was manufactured correctly.

Let's say your isolation clearance is 5mm.  What if a solder blob is
covering 4.5mm of that?  You'd never know with any of your low voltage
tests, but if that unit gets used in the field to the full isolation spec,
it will likely arc over and some rather bad things could happen.

Imagine what the dead guy's grieving widow's lawyer is going to make out of
the fact you were too cheap to spend 2 seconds per unit to save her
husband's life.  You wouldn't want me on that jury.  If on the other hand it
appears you did the "reasonable and customary" thing and tested each unit,
you've got a good argument to make.  In that case I'd probably side with you
unless they can prove negligence.


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