Testing

Testing

Testing

Product Approvals Ltd offers the below product testing services from our well-equipped testing laboratory located in central Telford in the UK West Midlands (close to the M54 motorway).

For enquiries on our testing services, please:

email test@productapprovals.co.uk

or call us on +44 (0)1588 620192

or send us a message via our contact page form

Key test services:

  • Safety Testing
  • EMC Testing (click for further information)
  • IP Testing
  • UL approval (for USA) preparation (pre-compliance) testing
  • Imported product testing - verification testing and inspection
  • Test project management

Our approach to testing:

Our approach to CE testing is to carry out testing under the CE ‘self-certification’ approach.

We are not a UKAS accredited test lab, however the test data we generate is perfectly admissible for inclusion in your CE Technical File as evidence of compliance with CE marking directives.

Although testing is not mandatory for many types of products under the CE marking regulations in many circumstances it can be the easiest and quickest way of showing that the product complies with the relevant EU CE marking directive.

Our engineers have many year’s experience of testing and have also previously set up and managed and developed commercial testing laboratories to the ISO 17025 lab quality standard

Learning from extensive previous lab management and testing roles our engineers set our own test lab up in 2015 and we are continuously developing this facility in order to better serve our customers.

Our test laboratory is run in accordance with ISO 17025 laboratory quality management practices including continuously monitored temperature and humidity levels.

Types of products tested:

We carry out safety inspection and testing in our laboratory to several commonly used EU harmonised product safety standards under the following general industry sectors / product types

  • Consumer products – typically coming under BS EN 60335-1 and relevant part 2 standards
  • Information Technology Equipment – such as computers, routers, servers and data devices. Mostly tested to BS EN 60950-1. Transition to EN 62368-1 in the future.
  • Audio, Video and similar products. BS EN 60065. Transition to EN 62368-1 in the future.
  • Laboratory, measurement and control equipment. BS EN 61010-1
  • Automatic electrical controls for household and similar use. BS EN 60730-1
  • We can also test to several other standards

We can also carry out pre-compliance testing as part of a third-party certification project such as obtaining UL (Underwriters Laboratories) approval.

  • Inspection and pre-compliance testing to give confidence that a product will pass stringent US NRTL (Nationally Recognised Testing Laboratory) formal lab tests.
  • We have many year’s experience in UL lab test methods and techniques and have managed customer’s UL qualified test laboratories including delivering test technician training.

Verification Testing and inspection for many categories of imported products

  • We carry out verification testing to give additional confidence (and evidence of due diligence) if for example you are not confident in test that may (or may not?) have been done by the overseas manufacturer

Customer site testing – e.g. earth bonding, temperature rise and power tests on machines

We can supply a test certificate in addition to documentation of test results

We can compile your CE Technical File and include the results of tests carried out in our test lab and/or others test labs, as desired

We have links with UKAS accredited test labs if you need accredited test data and we can manage the entire test process whether wholly in our lab, a combination of our lab and outsourced lab or fully outsourced.

Our test capabilities include:

Thermal (temperature rise) testing using multi-channel dataloggers

Dielectric Voltage Withstand testing. Also known as ‘Hipot’ and ‘flash’ testing

Fault testing

Flammability testing – glow wire, needle flame

Comprehensive EMC pre-compliance and EMC self-certification based testing for UKCA and CE marking

  • ESD, harmonics & flicker, near-field probing
  • Radiated emissions & immunity, conducted emissions & immunity, in our semi-anechoic chamber
  • EMC on-site testing (typically for large and heavy equipment / machines)
  • EMC troubleshooting and consultancy. In-lab and on-site

ErP testing such as measuring a product’s standby power consumption, accurate measurement of electrical power and related parameters using our state-of-the art power analyser equipment.

Environmental – such as endurance testing, in our programmable environmental temperature and humidity chamber.