SparkFun Forums

[rozon]

Has anyone prepared their project for sale, and had to go on with all those certification and statements?

I'm pondering about putting a project for sale, but reading the directives takes the breath out of me. I hope someone here has done such testing and is willing to share their experience on the subject. How much did it cost, what should I know before starting and so on...

I'm located in Europe, and there are some differences from US FCC, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[wiml]

Check out the Google news archives for sci.electronics.design (and its sister groups). Lots of professional product designers there and they sometimes discuss these kinds of issues. It looks pretty complicated (and expensive, with mandatory certification testing by an independent lab in many cases) but I think in some categories the requirements are a lot looser.

[jayjay]

I wanted to do a FCC Part 15b (Self-Certification), I got a quote, it was around USD3000, this was a year ago. I am not sure about the other certification gancy charges.

HTH
Jay

[rozon]

Hi,
been reading usenet on the subject, and it seems all they ever agree on is that this is a mine field...

US$3000 give or take US$1000 would be affordable. What my closest testhouse has said is more like US$8-10.000 but that was an estimate. The finishing cost could be much higher depending on what tests they needed and such.

Don't any of you guys produce a product for sale, and do all the docs? I mean, some of you seem to have electronics as much more than an hobby.

[sparky]

Nope. No cert, no docs. We slide under the FCC 'radar' by being a hobby house. All SFE products are not meant for full consumer use (think of shelves in WalMart or BestBuy), instead, we build things for hobby and research use. Therefore, certification (in the pure sense) is not needed.

I have heard similar horror stories, but for around $3k. It's mostly time and paper work.

We are starting to come up against the Pb-Free European policys more than anything. We are not lead free and don't have a plan to be, but some day... Ick.

-Nathan