Customer Reviews

CE Marking Handbook (Test & Measurement)

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The CE Marking Handbook offers a loving philosophical defense of the European Community's (EC's) ideas on product safety, but little in the way of practical resources needed by people who have to sell products in the EC which comply with the appropriate safety standards. After several hours of reading, I had gleaned virtually no useful information, and was ready to send the book to the circular file. The book's organization is obscure and confusing, and the prose more like a novel than a handbook; a difficult and confusing read. The book has a glaring lack of the SPECIFIC, DETAILED, product requirements for the EC (not a single safety standard, nor even a summary of a standard, is printed in the book, as far as I can tell) and a mountain of non-sense about the differences between US and EC safety values. WHO CARES?! Readers who would consider buying this book need help, not moralizing lectures on safety philosophy. Don't waste your time and money, buy something else. I am going to have to.

My attention was called to this book during a seminar. After reading its only review on Amazon, which was very critical, I was hesitant to even bother with further investigation of the book. I'm glad that I ignored that review.

This book achieves its objective competently. For the novice, a study of this book will equip the reader with the fundamental principles that will allow he or she to prepare a product for submission to a European safety agency. For the experienced product designer, this book will likely fill in a few gaps in knowledge that generally aren't learned by studying the European safety standards.

Regarding the previous review which states that this book is "low on content, void of assistance"... If one reads that review carefully, it is obvious why that conclusion was reached: "After several hours of reading, I had gleaned virtually no useful information..." The reviewer didn't read far enough into the book!

The first five chapters of the book are focused building a foundation for the basis of the European safety requirements, explaining the laws governing their enforcement, and guiding the reader through the process of determining which European standards are applicable. This is rather dry information, but it provides an essential foundation of understanding.

The previous reviewer needed more patience, or should have consulted the table of contents to find that chapter 6 was entitled "Design for Safety Conformity". It is a 50 page chapter (one third of the entire book) that provides specific, detailed requirements for European compliance. Chapter 6 is effectively the "handbook" portion of the text and is well organized from my perspective.

The book covers the differences between the philosophies of European and US approaches to safety. This understanding is helpful when selecting components for products that will have to comply with both US and European standards.

This book doesn't cover EMC issues in any depth, but that shouldn't be a surprise as the book doesn't claim that it does. The book subtitle is "A Practical Approach to Global SAFETY Certification". (Emphasis mine). Hence, for compliance in the EMC arena, the reader will have to go elsewhere. EMC compliance, however, is essential for meeting the requirements for CE-marking, so I reduced my rating of this book for not doing a better job of pointing the reader towards resources to help in this regard.

There are numerous European safety standards, and each usually has hundreds of pages. To provide detailed guidance in a single book in this context is a daunting task. The writer of this book competently and concisely addresses this reality by nailing the essential core principles behind safety compliance. He provides enough detail such that a capable novice could make wise decisions in choosing components and construction techniques that will comply with the vast majority of the applicable standards. However, one must ultimately study the safety standards to discover those few remaining unique requirements.

I recommend this book to those seeking to better understand the safety requirements for European conformity. His focus on the essential principles of safety is precisely why this book remains relevant more than a decade after it was written.