Ed,

Having been a Product Safety contact a few times in the past, I can relate
to a lot of your frustration. Believe me, you are not alone, nor the first.

As I read through your posting I identified with almost everything you said.
The last part is where I can shed some light on the subject.

One of the times I was doing the Prod. Saf. 'thing' we considered moving
away from CE to go to cUL. The main issue is end user acceptance. We had to
do a survey and contact the Canadian sales force to see if they thought it
was palatable. That was easy. And that is why we went that way instead of
vice versa, NRTL in place of UL.

The bottom line is that there are many city governments that have
regulations that *require* UL listing/label on products. Getting the masses
to change their thinking to accept what some of today's possibilities are is
going to be a big undertaking.

By the way, are you aware of the IPC ComplianceNet? You may want to 'attend'
that forum in addition to TechNet. I just recently did this myself.

Good luck in your efforts to 'comply'!

Richard Hamilton
Clemar Mfg. / Rain Bird
[log in to unmask]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Cosper [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 1998 3:23 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      [TN] UL approval material for PWB MFG.
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to thank everyone for the responses and comments regarding my
> questions. I posted the question out of frustration stemming from a
> seemingly unending and apparantly uncontrolled  receipt of invoices from
> UL.
>
> You see, I am of the opinion that UL did a great job in the 60s selling
> the public on the idea that if you buy something without the UL lable your
> kids will burn to death in there beds. I still remember some of the TV
> commercials! However, in todays industry many if not most of the material
> suppliers have effective testing methods to insure there products are
> safe. I really doubt we need UL to tell us if our products are safe. I
> suspect we do it just because we always have.
>
> Companies have been paying UL to add already approved materials to their
> file for years at enourmous aggregate costs. At last check, it costs about
> $700.00 just to add an approved material via CCIL.  Sure we try to pass
> that costs on to the suppliers but sometime we cant. And besides, the
> suppliers have already paid UL to get the initial qualification and
> ratings. Now, apparenlty there are some instances where a sample submitted
> by a board manufacture fails and is resubmitted. However, so far I've
> learned in those cases that new samples were simply remade and resubmitted
> and passed without changing anything. Now if the samples passes the 2nd
> time and approval is granted the I must ask "whats the point".
>
> I am not saying that UL approval is not a good idea. Especially in new
> product and material designs. But I simply cannot justify the current
> costs associated with adding already approved materials to an already
> approved pcb manufacturing process.
>
> As I understand it currently the "only" requirement a board shop has to
> use the UL logo is stipulated by the supplier. Now I know this is probably
> much more complicated than I realize but what I would like to know why
> cant the board shops simply have a UL approved process ( since basically
> all the processes in the industry are the same ) and then the OEM simply
> require that UL approved material be used in the manufacture of their
> parts. The soldermask and laminate industries could get together and
> acquire product flamabilty rates for each mix of masks and material
> dielectrics. The board shops can then use any material currenlty listed in
> the Yellow UL book as long as the flammability requirements are met.
>
> I wonder how many people today really stop and look for the UL lable. I
> suspect price has the biggest influence over our purchases.  Therefore I
> ask another question, would the OEMs lose business opportunities if they
> decided to no longer require UL approvals and took on the responsibility
> of testing for safety internally.   They way I see OEMs hold the ball
> regarding just how much influence UL can assert over our companies. Maybe
> its time to rethink our current beliefs...
>
> Hmmm.... I bet this sounds simpler than it is but thats just my two cents.
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> Ed Cosper
>
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