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He Blows Things Up So You Don't Have To
Red Wolf writes "Popular Science reports on what is possibly the world's coolest job. During his 19 years as a laboratory technician for Underwriters Laboratories, Chuck Cramer has set coffeemakers on fire, knocked computers off desks, short-circuited fans, and blown up everything from toasters to curling irons - all in the name of consumer safety."
Actually, I think this might be the coolest job on the planet.....
This reminds me of a great story I heard:
RollsRoyce developed a "gun" which could fire chickens (dead) at plane's windscreens for boewing to test on new designs etc. Anyway the Americans where working on a high speed train and waited to test the windscreens and having heard about this "gun" asking RR to send them one.
One receving it, they where alarmed at how many windows which they thought had been very safe shattered almost everytime. They send their results to RR and Boewing, asking what sorts of laminate glass was being used, as they couldn't believe all the planes here could withstands such a battering, and got the reply:
Deforst chickens first
Strangely enough, I have met the person who has this job, at least in Canada.
In Canada, condoms are medical devices, and are (at least back in 1988) regulated by the Bureau of Radiation and Medical Devices. The poor guy whose job it was to maintain rubber standards had his office in room 61A of the Health Protection Building (Building #7), Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa.
I got wind of this because that summer my job was to babysit two fax machines and a telex for the entire building. This guy slips a 20-page fax into my inbox, which I start sending... and reading. It turns out it was the testing procedure for condoms! Interesting reading...
(Test 20. If >1 leaks, fail the batch. If exactly one leaks, test another 20. Or something like that. Which goes to show that a condom alone is not adequate protection.)
And the tools used are 100% inorganic, sorry.
I hate to tell you but you're misinformed. I work at UL and heres a few things to note. If a power supply is listed by UL, that doesn't mean that the computer is listed. Companies can't put the UL mark on the case if the power supply is the only thing listed. UL looks for this and files lawsuits when it finds people are violating their terms.
I can't really speak to the injury that UL causes to small company's, but my opinion is that you need to have some outside party unbiasly testing your product. Also, turnaround is not so bad that it will prevent you from getting your product on the market.
Finally, your comment about battery powered devices not requiring the UL mark is flat out wrong. First of all, very few industry's "require" a UL mark, UL simply provides the mark so that consumers can trust a product. Secondly, UL not only lists the batteries that go into the devices, but also the devices that they go in. Products don't need to be plugged into the wall to be tested.
Hope this clears a few things up
Chris
1. Listing
2. Recognition
3. Classification
"UL Listing" requires submission of the whole product to UL for testing. What you describe in your first paragraph is a product that uses UL-recognized components, but itself is not UL-listed, nor can it legally claim to be.
In regard to your second point, I personally know a tiny, one-man company who has submitted his product to UL, developed product testing routines and gotten the product UL-listed. It wasn't a nightmare at all.
His line of work recently saved the life of a would-be murder victim. Check it out: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/2304602/detail.htm l
Sorry mate, but I don't believe you. It's an ancient story. I first heard it best part of a decade ago, and in that version it was the Americans who were being idiots. Just goes to show, huh?
If you'll look at a product with the UL logo, there should be a File Number listed there with it. I'm looking at the bottom of my keyboard and see "E140034." If I go to the UL website and search by this file number, it brings up details on the component that was approved. If you see a UL logo with no File Number, something's probably wrong.
UL is very strict about using their logo and certifications on a product.
**I worked at a company that bought existing components (including the enclosure) to make motor control centers and PLC cabinets. We were UL "compliant" as long as we used a very specific set of standards handed to us by UL dictating what components we used and how we used them. UL also came and inspected our work occasionally to make sure it was up to snuff. We were not entitled to put a UL stamp on our finished product, however.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Actually, the films you mentioned are not as confidential as you think. I've seen movies of the Boeing 777 jet engines being subjected to some extreme tests, like firing dead (yet NOT frozen) chickens using an air-powered cannon at the front fan at speeds up to 300 mph and also deliberately damaging the front fan with small explosive charges to ensure the nacelle stays together in case of front fan failure.
It think it's likely nowadays that we may see the engine manufacturers subject the engine/nacelle combination to the type of destructive event caused by the impact of Man-Portable Air Defense (MANPAD) surface-to-air missile. They want to make sure the engine/nacelle combination will still maintain reasonable structural integrity even after impact from the warhead of a MANPAD missile so an airliner that has been attacked by a terrorist with a MANPAD missile can still fly on the remaining operating engine(s) and make a safe emergency landing.
I don't know if this story is true or not, but it has a great lesson in it.
I heard that the story happened at GE. They worked for years developing a type of plastic to be used in making fighter aircraft canopies. Millions of dollars in reasearch and they had the prototype. One of the last tests to be done on the canopy was to fire a (thawed) chicken at it from an air cannon. The canopy shattered, sending them back to the drawing board.
The moral of that story is "do the chicken test first". When you're developing prototypes of something, you'll have some tests which are pass/fail and some in which the prototypes are merely ranked according to the test results. Determine the pass/fail type tests and run them as early in the development cycle as you can. Then go ahead and run the rest of your battery of tests on those samples that passed the "chicken test". Saves money and time. I taught this in Enginering school for years; it seems to be self-evident, but you wouldn't believe the number of people who had never considered the concept.
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Does slashdot follow hem (did not bother to read as I am not gonna link to them).
(Taken from http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm)
McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald's had known they had a problem with the way they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.
McFact No. 2: McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious injuries - more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns in the past decade have been settled by the Corporation - and yet they never so much as consulted a burn expert regarding the issue.
McFact No. 3: The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay.
McFact No. 4: The woman, an 81-year old former department store clerk who had never before filed suit against anyone, said she wouldn't have brought the lawsuit against McDonald's had the Corporation not dismissed her request for compensation for medical bills.
McFact No. 5: A McDonald's quality assurance manager testified in the case that the Corporation was aware of the risk of serving dangerously hot coffee and had no plans to either turn down the heat or to post warning about the possibility of severe burns, even though most customers wouldn't think it was possible.
McFact No. 6: After careful deliberation, the jury found McDonald's was liable because the facts were overwhelmingly against the company. When it came to the punitive damages, the jury found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct, and rendered a punitive damage award of 2.7 million dollars. (The equivalent of just two days of coffee sales, McDonalds Corporation generates revenues in excess of 1.3 million dollars daily from the sale of its coffee, selling 1 billion cups each year.)
McFact No. 7: On appeal, a judge lowered the award to $480,000, a fact not widely publicized in the media.
UL has online certification search. Look up those E-numbers and make sure that they match the manufacturer info. Report phonies to UL and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. If you're in telecom or data center operations, it's definitely worth checking wall transformers against the database.
A power supply that passes UL testing will not catch fire if dead-shorted indefinitely. It will not catch fire due to a single-component failure. Some of the phonies will catch fire if merely loaded up to their rated load.
Some review site (ExtremeTech?) did a PC power supply review a few months back, and many of the power supplies wouldn't deliver their rated voltage at full load. Three of the power supplies caught fire. All the ones that passed were in the UL database. None of the ones that caught fire were.
That UL label really means something.
For those of you that don't know, Underwriter's Laboratories is a private company. It is not a government agency. It predates most regulatory agencies. It predates Consumer Reports. It predates Ralph Nader. It's a system that works. Once upon a time calling upon the government to pass a law was an act of LAST resort, not first resort as it is now. That's when UL started.
The UL label doesn't mean that the product cannot possibly cause harm. Rather it means that the product is safe when used in an appropriate fashion according to the directions. Unlike your assertion, the manufacturer cannot slap the UL logo on a product without UL's permission. That's why there's this little (r) next to the letters UL. Does this hurt the little guy? A little bit, but not nearly as much as a government regulation in the same circumstances. A UL label is voluntary. You can always wholesale your products through outlets other than Wal-Mart. But don't be surprised if no one wants to buy it. I certainly wouldn't buy a power saw without a UL label, would you?
Right now there's this big push to label food differently. People want to know if their tomatoes are organic (as opposed to inorganic), the milk doesn't have hormones, their steak wasn't irradiated, etc. But because calling upon the government is the first resort in this day and age, everyone is looking to the FDA or equivalent to provide these labels.
I wonder how a UL style private system of food testing and labelling would work instead. Currently when I see a label that says "organic" it's meaningless to me. Maybe the state I'm in has incredibly lax standards for organic. Maybe there's no regulations at all, so the producer just slapped their own label on it. Maybe there's really strict regulations that put the small family organic farms out of business. On the other hand, I would trust a food label that says "UL(r) certified organic".
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