CE

CE marking is important for ensuring consumers are buying things that are safe and meet their expectations.

However, CE marking has a lot of implications, in terms of costs and tests, and so on. It basically outlaws your average "cottage industry" type set up.

With modern tech, that "cottage industry" can be technological.

But what if it is not "safe". And this is a very good point.

So there are sites like Tindie, and Lectronz, that act as a platform / marketplace to sell loads of tech that is "home grown" and "cottage industry", with a lot of caveats on T&Cs.

My personal view is ...

• Most consumers need robust consumer protection law
• Buying something should, by default, be 100% safe
• If, and only if, the seller is super amazingly clear on what they sell should there be exceptions.

Oddly this ties in to the utter stupidity that is the fact England and Wales allow selling "raw milk". It is crazy, but the laws require (a) higher hygiene standards, and importantly (b) VERY CLEAR warnings that what you are buying is not safe to drink!

So are PCBs the same?

I make a load of PCBs, and sell a load. As it happens, as a company, we also make some serious routers. For those there is a SHIT LOAD of stuff we do to make totally sure it meets all the requirements. I mean, heck, this is stuff using mains voltage inputs, so it matters. And it costs a lot.

But we also make small PCBs, hobbyist stuff, prototype boards. And the cost of CE marking would be mental. Make 10 PCBs and pay £10,000 for testing and certification. No. That does not work, does it?

So can we sell them without a CE?

This gets in to a grey area, as CE mark is needed for most things but not, for example, prototypes. Indeed, you can order a PCB from China for your own use, and no way they CE mark / certify it for you.

Interestingly, one of the key aspects of CE for many of my boards is RF compatibility, and for that the ESP32 module I use is CE marked and certified.

But we want to be 100% clear to customers that these board are not certificated or tested beyond that. They are prototype/dev boards, for specialist/hobbyist use only.

So we came up with a new mark... NONCE (Thanks Alex for help making that). Maybe we should trademark that, LOL.

And to be clear, what we sell is generally PCBs, in a panel, break off excess parts, and so on. And even if we sell a case it is a two part resin 3D print you use to contain the snapped out PCB. The end user does the "final assembly", it is a "kit".

At the end of the day we would not want to, in any way whatsoever, to mislead a customer as to what they are buying, ever.