Christian Klippel
Master Poster
What's that CE issue all about? I think some people here have a gross misconception how CE approval is actually done. No government or (governmental) authority does any tests at all there. Such testing is done by third party companies, or even single persons. The DUT is sent in to that company/person, together with a complete list of specifications about it. Then it will be measured/tested to verify that it is inside these specifications, which also must be inside the specs required by CE. Once that is done the manufacturer can slap a CE sign on the unit and be done with it.
No "authority" involved at all. In fact, the whole testing by a third party is completely optional. You can assign a CE yourself. It just gets bad if the device causes problems and is found out to not adhere to the spec-limits as imposed by CE. That's the main reason why manufacturers have third parties do a CE conformity testing: So that there is someone they can point the finger at in case something goes wrong. With respect to the final customer, it is always the manufacturer who issues the "CE conformity declaration" ("CE Konformitätserklärung" in German). How the manufacturer got to that point is usually never told. It's rather uncommon to see such a conformity declaration that mentions the lab that did the testing.
I have quite a bunch of such CE testing reports at hand, in case anyone is interested to see the "meat" of such a thing. For example, for some radio manufactured in China: It has a CE sticker. There is a guy in Germany who certifies the CE, who got a unique registration number (I'm talking about the guy, not the radio). However, that guy did not do the actual CE testing. That was in fact done by another company in China. All he does is to give his name, and in turn trust that the actual test report is accurate. Just a pile of paperwork, nothing else.
In short: A CE mark does say exactly nothing at all besides that the manufacturer claims that the device conforms with the requirements for such a mark. That it really does, that that was verified and if so, by whom, can only be speculated.
Greetings,
Chris
No "authority" involved at all. In fact, the whole testing by a third party is completely optional. You can assign a CE yourself. It just gets bad if the device causes problems and is found out to not adhere to the spec-limits as imposed by CE. That's the main reason why manufacturers have third parties do a CE conformity testing: So that there is someone they can point the finger at in case something goes wrong. With respect to the final customer, it is always the manufacturer who issues the "CE conformity declaration" ("CE Konformitätserklärung" in German). How the manufacturer got to that point is usually never told. It's rather uncommon to see such a conformity declaration that mentions the lab that did the testing.
I have quite a bunch of such CE testing reports at hand, in case anyone is interested to see the "meat" of such a thing. For example, for some radio manufactured in China: It has a CE sticker. There is a guy in Germany who certifies the CE, who got a unique registration number (I'm talking about the guy, not the radio). However, that guy did not do the actual CE testing. That was in fact done by another company in China. All he does is to give his name, and in turn trust that the actual test report is accurate. Just a pile of paperwork, nothing else.
In short: A CE mark does say exactly nothing at all besides that the manufacturer claims that the device conforms with the requirements for such a mark. That it really does, that that was verified and if so, by whom, can only be speculated.
Greetings,
Chris
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