Iphone charging...

Agree with what mcb1 said, furthermore in the UK (and probably Europe) claiming ignorance of the law is never a mitigating factor (even if you hire someone - hence you should hire the best team you can afford) - you'll be liable no matter of fault, but the penalty will be much worse if you actually were negligent enough to not be aware of the legislation.

but if the thing burns someone .... as the thread has repeatedly mentioned; it is not far-fetched), then you'll be liable.

Worse than that is there were warning given prior.

In some countries you might be able to claim you didn't know, but if the content of these posts were discovered, then that claim might be shown to be untrue.

We're simply trying to warn of the possible problems.

In reality unless you design is much cheaper to produce and has benefits people will pay for, you might struggle to compete against our Asian friends.

Mark

Hi Martin,

A URL was given earlier that will auto-generate a circuit if you tell it voltage, current etc. It will even let you tweak parts

if some are unavailable.

So, you now know how to get your circuit. And the components can be purchased from a distributor. And you can then

set about testing it.

You stated earlier that you don't want to hire anyone but want to do this yourself.

However, it won't be production-ready (you stated you want to make these for a living). For that you really do need to

hire an engineer, or be prepared to buy and read up relevant standards for the country in which you sell it, make

measurements to confirm it complies, and use materials that comply with the standards too.

.

For instance, that $0.99 board, can you confirm it is made of flame retardant material that won't burn if it overheats?

Or that it doesn't radiate noise beyond legislated levels?

Or that it does not contain certain chemicals (all depends on your country's regulations).

There is no website anywhere with a production-ready design, something like that is chargeable, by hiring an engineer

in your region.

If you don't want to hire anyone (which I think you've already stated you're not prepared to do), then the slower path

is to study the standards for your country and build your design based on that.

The thread did digress into charger safety but if the thing burns someone (this is a realistic possibility whenever

charging a device is involved, as the thread has repeatedly mentioned; it is not far-fetched), then you'll be liable.

Guys, can we stop this talk and try and help me maybe? xD
I still have no clue where to go now in terms of components or circuit diagrams :/

Agree 100%!

We have no way any more of easily identifying a fake and a genuine charger from visual inspection alone, -  the physical differences are so slight as can be seen in the URL that Paul posted earlier.

As an aside I know someone who recently built some hobby device and tried to shave some cost by buying some parts from ebay - turned out they were fake op-amps (well,

genuinely some sort of op-amps but with the part code of a more expensive op-amp printed on top!) and spent weeks getting to the bottom of why his circuit performed

so poorly. Each time he suspected the op-amp was damaged by heat he replaced it with another one from the same supplier.. resulting in plenty of frustrated trouble-shooting..

The shoddy build that these chargers is quite impressive.

Problem is that the good ones are a total rip off, whilst the cheap ones then flood the remainder of the market. There is little room for well built, reasonable priced units and no way of differentiating them from the cheap stuff even the original equipment can barely do that !

my statement was in no way meant to deminish the issue of crap unsafe power adapters flooding into so many countries

Sorry I was trying to refer to how the accident happened.

How many Laptops are actually earthed?

It just happened that this particular one was (apparently). Combined with having the laptop in physical contact, using the phone while plugged in and the faulty charger created the necessary conditions, with an fatal end.

At work we refer to this as the Swiss Cheese where all three 'holes in the cheese' had to line up for it to occur.

Sadly we are all guilty of purchasing based on price, and I have no doubt that some larger suppliers are buying from similar sources ... but who is doing the checking.

Does element14/Newark pull any of their items apart to ensure the manufacturing standards are up to scratch.?

While I have no doubt that they have paperwork to ensure it meets the standards, is the paperwork legitimate.?, or has the factory pulled a swifty.

Mark

Yes I completly agree, my statement was in no way meant to deminish the issue of crap unsafe power adapters flooding into so many countries with no or false markings on them

Here in Canada we often look for the CE mark, many chinese have a CE mark on them which more appropriatly means "Chinese Export"... really a fake CE mark and the differences are noteable but slight http://www.ce-marking.org/what-is-ce-marking.html

Of course we also have our own conformance CSA mark too View CSA Marks | Certification Marks & Labels | CSA Group

At least with NO Markings its a buyer be warned vs a false marking that leads to confusion

As you say, if in doubt... Dont

Peter

Robert Peter Oakes

As in many of these things there seems to be a series of things lining up, that resulted in this unfortunate incident.

I can't seem to locate some of the original documents, but this discussion seems to highlight that the laptop was earthed.

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/116895/how-can-a-faulty-usb-charger-kill-you

Never the less, the Dept of Fair Trading has suggested that no-one buy anythign without the safety mark, along with some fairly heafty prosecutions.

The cost of the testing is quite high, so my advice remains DON'T.

The case is also a reminder of why we are passionate about electrical safety here on the forum.

Mark

Oh, I understand and have seen that bit, im talking about the user as part of the circuit with enough current through the chest to leave burns ? from a laptop to possibly a hand hald cell phone, there must have been a few things wrong to complete that circuit because even the laptop charger / power bricks are typically isolated