UL approval

[Keith Rathband]

I'm designing a smart home system, which will need to be UL approved. I
never gone through this before, and have some questions.

What does this involve ?

What are the lilkley costs ?

What considerations should i make in my design ?

What aspects will UL be mainly concerned with, ie, RF emmisions, High
voltage saftey etc ?

Thanks,

Keith

 

[ryan weihl]

Keith Rathband wrote:

I'm designing a smart home system, which will need to be UL approved. I
never gone through this before, and have some questions.

What does this involve ?

What are the lilkley costs ?

What considerations should i make in my design ?

What aspects will UL be mainly concerned with, ie, RF emmisions, High
voltage saftey etc ?

Thanks,

Keith




buy equipment that is UL approved.

If you want to design it yourself you are looking
at several $1000 to cover the cost of the approval
process.
rw

 

[Chris]

Keith Rathband wrote:

I'm designing a smart home system, which will need to be UL approved. I
never gone through this before, and have some questions.

What does this involve ?

What are the lilkley costs ?

What considerations should i make in my design ?

What aspects will UL be mainly concerned with, ie, RF emmisions, High
voltage saftey etc ?

Thanks,

Keith

Hi, Keith. UL doesn't "approve" anything anymore. You can obtain UL
listing, which means your product can carry the UL certification label.
It shows that samples of the product have been tested by UL and been
found to conform to the applicable standards (available, of course,
from UL).

Without knowing more about your product, it's not possible to say which
standards you must test.

You might want to go explore the UL website. They do have quite a bit
of non-technical information about their standards, which will give you
an idea where you want to go.

But UL listing isn't cheap, and it's an impossible project for a
newbie. If your product is worth it, and UL listing is essential, you
should hire an engineer with some experience in the applicable
standards and the UL submittal process as a consultant. He can help to
guide your product through certification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwriters_Laboratories
http://www.ul.com/

Good luck
Chris

 

[Dan Hollands]

Chris's suggestions are good but to more specifically answer your questions

UL is concerned with Safety - they have many different specifications
targeted at different products. For electronics safety related to the
primary power and to fire are the main considerations. Your design should us
UL listed components for anything connected to the mains powers e.g.
transformers, filter capacitor, terminal blocks, relays etc. You also have
to pay attention to trace spacing on the pcb and the pcbs must be of
flameproof material. Grounding, wire insulation and terminal spacing are
also issues. In addition to submitting a unit and documents, UL will
periodically inspect your manufacturing facility to insure that the product
being manufactured matches the unit they inspected.

RF emissions requirements are governed by the FCC they require testing of
any consumer electronic

Although the US doesn't have any requirement for electrical noise immunity,
if I was designing a smart home system I would want design tested to the EU
standards (CE) for impulse and RF noise withstand capability so the
electrical noise would not mess up the operation and make it dumb house
system.

If you are not designing hardware from scratch but are putting together a
system from commercially available components, then I would make sure the
units are UL, FCC and CE certified.

Dan



--
Dan Hollands
1120 S Creek Dr
Webster NY 14580
QuickScore@USSailing.net
www.QuickScoreRace.com
"Keith Rathband" <notreal@example.net> wrote in message
news:431c6d5f$0$18644$14726298@news.sunsite.dk...

I'm designing a smart home system, which will need to be UL approved. I
never gone through this before, and have some questions.

What does this involve ?

What are the lilkley costs ?

What considerations should i make in my design ?

What aspects will UL be mainly concerned with, ie, RF emmisions, High
voltage saftey etc ?

Thanks,

Keith