Electrical safety - I don't think so!

[no_spam]

Have a look at these pics showing an "LED driver", bought recently from a UK supplier. In this one

note the "screw heads" in the recesses in the dark grey cable clamps. In this one note that the screw heads are not parts of screws but have been carefully molded into the cable clamp and therefore do f*** all to restrain the cables. Now note the CE mark, which indicates that all the essential requirements -including electrical safety- have been met so the item can be shipped into and around the EU market without concern. It would be interesting to see the Declaration of Conformity.

WTH did they go to the bother of molding dummy screw heads? The cost and time to insert 4 screws, or to do a sensible restraint design would have been tiny. Grrr!

[Chris French]

In message , no [e-mail] writes

Who? This sort of thing normally comes from random Ebay or Amazon Marketplace sellers.

Well, it means someone stamped a CE mark on it :-)

So that it looks like there are screws in a photo.

When you are operating in the counterfeit market, with the margins they probably have, and probably hundreds of small manufacturers churning things out, every little fraction of a Yaun counts

[pamela]

It reminds me of those micro hifi systems in one plastic enclosure but with fake recesses and fake screwheads to make it look like a stack of separates.

I still use one in the kitchen.

[Roger Mills]

Is the second one a later model from the same stable - it looks very similar?

If so, could they have moved to some sort of internal constraint, but kept the original main moulding to avoid re-tooling?

What happens if you tug the wires - do they *feel* constrained?

[charles]

which might well stand for "Chinese Export"

[no_spam]

They are photos of the same "driver" In the second one I've removed an end cap - it only took a very gentle nudge.

The wires are soldered straight into a PCB.

They move the PCB that's inside the box!

I forgot to say that the box top pings off too:

[Brian Gaff]

Yes, the worst things I've seen are in these cheap usb power supplies. The real thing has proper moulded clamps and protection so when the two halves of the plug are fixed together all is solid and safe, but I've had several which have looked the part but only have two tiny self tapping screws holding them to gather and nothing inside is accurately moulded enough to hold the wires to the pins out of the way, and when one comes apart the inside is all live, ie its not welded at all. As you say many of these things carry ce marks but to me they are an accident waiting to happen. If the electronics are to the same standard as the casing then goodness knows what they might to do to some expensive equipment if they fail. They also chuck out rf birdies like crazy.

Why is it that we seem unable to control fake items that could bead danger to the public, while we are making loads of health and safety rules that preclude people from doing their own wiring. Seems crazy. Brian

[tabbypurr]

plenty of end users know no better

they fry the connected equipment

volume. How do you police over 100 million goods coming through the ports annually?

Safety rules should be about safety, not criminalising people acting safely.

NT

[Lee]

Yeah, that PCB really looks the part. I don't think I'd even trust it enough to test, let alone install! :) :)

[no_spam]

Surprisingly, the PCB track creepage and clearance distances probably comply with the ENs, but we don't know how the transformer is designed. It's the ineffective dummy cable clamps that really bothered me.

[Lee]

Well, obviously I can't see the other side,(or under the cap) but the apparent lack of a fuse (or safety resistor) or even the use of thinned out track, bothers me more :)

[no_spam]

That's fair, I was thinking about shock risk rather than fire risk. It's a standard SMPS (bridge, smoothing, traffo primary, switch transistor and control IC); the output is half wave rectified and smoothed but seems to be open loop. The tracks are thinnish but there's no obvious fusible link or device.