IEC cerification in the U.S

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69FIREBIRD

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Hi I'm in charge of the design of control panels for a company exporting Shredder machines to your United States of America. I've been using NFPA 79 and NFPA 70 for calculations and requirements. Feedback from the U.S distributors in house electrician is that the components wiring etc need to have a UL Certification. At present most have UL & IEC certification, and the remainder just IEC certification. my question is do all components (including electric motors) need to have a UL Certification i.e. a IEC Certification alone is not satisfactory for machinery in the United States.

Awaiting your feedback, thanks in advance. A sample of what we have been putting together for a global market is attached.

Ps The pink wire (that I have just learned cant be used ? should be blue) is used to highlight the reset circuit for a CAT3 safety circuit with manual reset (it proves the contactors have dropped out and none are jammed or welded closed before the machine can be put back into operate again)

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
 
NEC 2008 articles 90.7 and 110.3 just require that material be inspected and deemed suitable fir its intended use by a recognized organization. Although I'm not an inspector, I can't see any problem with IEC or CSA stickers.
 
69FIREBIRD said:
Hi I'm in charge of the design of control panels for a company exporting Shredder machines to your United States of America. I've been using NFPA 79 and NFPA 70 for calculations and requirements. Feedback from the U.S distributors in house electrician is that the components wiring etc need to have a UL Certification. At present most have UL & IEC certification, and the remainder just IEC certification. my question is do all components (including electric motors) need to have a UL Certification i.e. a IEC Certification alone is not satisfactory for machinery in the United States.

Awaiting your feedback, thanks in advance. A sample of what we have been putting together for a global market is attached.

Ps The pink wire (that I have just learned cant be used ? should be blue) is used to highlight the reset circuit for a CAT3 safety circuit with manual reset (it proves the contactors have dropped out and none are jammed or welded closed before the machine can be put back into operate again)

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Click to expand...

Our company requires every component, or the entire assembly, to be approved by a Nationally Recognized Testing Lab. Neither IEC or CSA count as such in the US, but we find them acceptable for jobs outside the US.
 
pbeasley said:
Our company requires every component, or the entire assembly, to be approved by a Nationally Recognized Testing Lab. Neither IEC or CSA count as such in the US, but we find them acceptable for jobs outside the US.
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CSA does indeed count.

But the rest of this is pertinent. While there is no NATIONAL code requirement that control panels must be UL listed, each individual state has the right to add anything they want to the NEC (NFPA 70) and many states do indeed add a requirement that control panels must bear an NRTL listing label. So UL, CSA, ETL and a number of other smaller companies are approved NRTLs. UL is just the most widely known.

To get UL listing on a control panel, you must either submit the entire control panel to UL (or one of their agents in your country) for testing and evaluation, OR, you must have your shop certified by them to be able to build control panels under their auspices. That is the route most panel builders take because it is far less expensive, unless you are building thousands of panels that are all exactly the same.

In that process, ALL components must be UL listed or UL Recognized (slightly different). There are specific rules by which you can use "unevaluated components", but the requirements are generally onerous and something you want to avoid if at all possible.

If you don't want to do all that, there are separate companies all over the world that will do that for you. You send them your drawings and Bill of Materials, they build the panels for you and apply their UL label.
 
pbeasley said:
I have been told in the past that CSA was not sufficient... looks like it's time to figure out if that is true or not, and why :smile:
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Jraef's answer is pretty complete and SAC's link is relevant, so I'll just add this:

CSA is a NRTL when they are certifying a product to one of the standards listed on this page.

If the product is certified only to a CSA standard it not "NRTL" certified. This doesn't mean it isn't a fine product, just that it isn't certified to one of the referenced standards. UL has a similar arrangement with products for the Canadian market.
 
Thanks for your feedback guys. It sounds like there is a lot more then meets the eye.

These machines have no specific location within U.S as to where they are being sold at the point of manufacture so there is potential for them to end up in states with high regulatory requirements.

For us UL components are the most readily available for use in manufacture of our panels. If the panels are built using these UL components and as per NFPA 70 / 79 then this would be a good starting point but ideally the panel as a hole should be UL rated by us gaining a UL shop certification and "stamping" the panel as a whole.

I've started talking to local UL agency and also a local machine manufacturer that has UL508A shop certification as they export their machines to the U.S. (the manufacturer is not interested in building panels for us but is happy to assist with knowledge and specifying)

Just to highlight one other thing as we do not supply the electric motors (Brook Crompton brand) to the machine manufacturer I have noticed that these only have IEC & CE markings on them. I have read some of the Brook Crompton internet literature and see that the motors are available with UR certification so think I should be advising the machine manufacturer that they require these UR certified motors in their machines for the U.S- is this correct?
 
UR (UL Recognized Component) is a little different than UL "Listed". As a UR product, it can only be used as PART OF a completely UL Listed assembly. So if, for example, you are building the control panel and one of the components is UR, not "Listed", that means you must "add it to your procedure" with UL. You must describe to UL exactly how you are going to use it, with what, protected by what, mounted in what way, wired in what way etc. etc. UR also often means that the product can only be use WITH something else. An example is what are commonly called "ice cube" relays; the relay and socket are not UL Listed, they are only UR, and technically you can ONLY use a relay WITH the specific socket it was tested with, which therefore means the one from the same manufacturer. Many people mistakenly think for example that you can use an Omron relay with an Idec socket, because the relay plugs into it. But a UL inspector will usually reject that; Idedc + Idec or Omron + Omron.

How that applies to a motor, I have no idea. I have never heard of UR on a motor before other than in an appliance application. It is generally considerably easier to get UR for a product. It involves less testing, because it is assumed that some overall system will be evaluated and/or tested later. So it might be that someone at Brooke-Crompton did not really familiarize themselves with this process (or didn't care) and took the cheap way out, which essentially shifts the burden and expense to the equipment manufacturer. At best, the equipment manufacturer knew all this and only asked B-C for UR knowing that they would be listing the entire machine anyway.

But the motor is not considered part of the control panel, so you would not need to worry about that.
 
69FIREBIRD said:
Hi I'm in charge of the design of control panels for a company exporting Shredder machines to your United States of America. I've been using NFPA 79 and NFPA 70 for calculations and requirements. Feedback from the U.S distributors in house electrician is that the components wiring etc need to have a UL Certification. At present most have UL & IEC certification, and the remainder just IEC certification. my question is do all components (including electric motors) need to have a UL Certification i.e. a IEC Certification alone is not satisfactory for machinery in the United States.

Awaiting your feedback, thanks in advance. A sample of what we have been putting together for a global market is attached.

Ps The pink wire (that I have just learned cant be used ? should be blue) is used to highlight the reset circuit for a CAT3 safety circuit with manual reset (it proves the contactors have dropped out and none are jammed or welded closed before the machine can be put back into operate again)

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Click to expand...

You may want to consider building the panels here and have a final assembly and testing point for the entire machine in the US. Your company would receive a tax break and I don't think that your company's focus - and where they they make their profit - is in the control panel portion of the assembly.

Repair and replacement is always a bear when you need to deal with IEC components.
 
One thing to consider is NFPA 70, Article 409. The FPN (Fine Print Note) following 409.1 references UL 508A "Industrial Control Panels" and indicates that it's a "Safety Standard".

Section 409.110 "Marking" and under 409.110(3) has the same reference as noted above.

You could be come qualified by an NRTL to fabricate your panels under UL 508A by any one of the following NRTL's:

- Intertek Testing (Note they have an office in Sweden)
- MET Laboratories
- TUV America, Inc (not the German sister company)
- TUV Rheinland of North America (again, not the German sister Company)
- Underwriter Laboratories UL (they have locations in Europe)

When you become "NRTL Listed", the agency (one of those above) will come by and do periodic inspections of your "Process" for a fee.

Get yourself a copy of UL 508A (I recommend IHS, runs about $500.00 US) as all of the above organizations use it as the basis for testing, and get your self a copy of the UL 2008 White Book and read up on "Category Code" "NITW".

If you're interested to know who all is listed by UL as a UL 508A shop, go to their Online Certifications Directory and under "UL Category Code" enter the term "NITW". You'll see other options that allow you to narrow down your search by Country, Name, etc.
 
IEC Certification in the US

IEC Certification in the US

To become a UL 508A panel shop, see this link
http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/powerandcontrols/industrialcontrolpanels/

Here is the link to the Industrial Control Panels (NITW) Guide Information from UL's Online Certification Directory. http://database.ul.com/cgi-bin/XYV/...n=versionless&parent_id=1073990195&sequence=1

If you would like to see manufacturers who have Listing under the category, click view Listings in the upper left hand corner.

If someone was certifying the machine connected to the panel, yes the motor would need to be a UL Recognized Component (backwards UR).

A CSA mark is only good in the US if it has US next to the CSA, so it would say CSA US, meaning it was certified for compliance with US standards. CSA alone means it was evaluated to Canadian Standards.
 
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