vde screwdrivers, pliers, etc.

[Stephen]

Hello,

Just a quick question. Are VDE tools better than "insulated" tools? Are they tested to a higher spec or is it that insulated tools are not tested to any defined spec at all?

Thanks.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The answer is how long is a piece of string. VDE is a standards organisation - but this doesn't mean something not marked as such wouldn't pass.

[John Rumm]

I think you have hit the nail on the head... Insulated _may_ perform as well, but there is no way of knowing for sure. It probably will perform well enough for 240V use, but I would not trust something untested beyond that.

[unopened]

I'll quote the relevant Wikipedia article in it's entirety:

"The VDE is the German Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies, a professional body based in Frankfurt am Main. It was founded as Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (Association of German Electrical Engineers) in Berlin in 1893 and renamed itself to Verband der Elektrotechnik, Elektronik und Informationstechnik in 1998. The VDE has as of 2005[update] some

33,000 members.

The role of the VDE in Germany is comparable to that of the IET in the United Kingdom and the IEEE in the United States."

One of its activities is as a standards organization. For example, the VDE maintains the German electrical wiring regulations (DIN/VDE

0100)."

So a VDE stamp probably means (forgeries excepted) that the tool has been tested to the relevant standard by a VDE accredited testing house. The raises the questions (a) what are the relevant standards? and (b) how are they created, maintained, and enforced? and (c) is VDE the only organisation that can accredit testing? (there are in fact others).

You don't know what performance characteristics an unmarked tool will turn out to have, even if labelled 'insulated' by the selling organisations.

Of course, even marked tools may not have been tested. It could be that a representative sample of tools is taken from the production run and the one you buy happens to be an unrepresentative outlier. It depends upon the testing regime, of which I have no knowledge.

If you are going routinely to trust your life to this set of tools, I suggest you might want to think out how reputable your source of supply is and whether you think the testing regimes are fit for purpose. The motor industry (to name one) has a huge problem with fake, substandard parts getting into the supply chain. The forgery of the packaging is so good, it easily passes routine inspection, and similar problems have hit the aircraft maintenance industry as well. Buying from reputable suppliers helps to decrease the risk.

Cheers,

Sid

[Stephen]

Sorry for the late reply but what I have quoted above is more or less what I had thought. Thanks for confirming that.