Take a look?

With the thing worth £50 million+, not really.

Regards

Richard

It was a spacecraft. Couldn't you have just fired it to its destination - into a low earth orbit, then drop it out of orbit on to where it needed to be? .

(Apologies Richard, I sense a competition starting here......).

To save the bother of following the link this is the paragraph in question - 

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Not all products must have CE marking. It is compulsory only for most of the products covered by the New Approach Directives. It is forbidden to affix CE marking to other products. 

Great, another non-answer! I'll have a bash then, here's an actual answer -

The CE marking is NOT required for the following products:

• Chemicals
• Pharmaceuticals
• Cosmetics
• Foodstuffs

So the things we must not mark are firmly Off Topic and pretty much irrelevant to this and any other On Topic discussion :D

- Nick

Edited By Nick Hulme on 29/12/2016 22:30:33

Neil - the CE mark means it complies with the Directive(s) - it does not mean anything about standards. Standards (especially 'harmonised' ones) are one means that may be used to demonstrate compliance - but not the only one.

If by 'small boilers' you mean under 2 litres capacity, these are categorised as SEP under the PED and must not be CE marked.

Well we are into 5 pages now so this has got to be one of Fizzy's better hand grenade posts.

Pull pin, count 5 and stand back laughing.

Richard, sounds like it would have been cheaper to buy an aeroplane and just put it in it.

I rather agree with JS. Asking the vendor, rather than posting on a forum, would have been a far better course of action. Only post (as a potential warning) if the response is decidely dodgy or evasive. But some don't think that way.

SEP is used in the directives and supporting documentation as an abbreviation for "Sound Engineering Practice", this applies to low risk vessels where application of SEP by the manufacturer is seen as adequate, this only prevents CE marking under the Pressure Equipment Directive.

This does not however preclude the equipment in question being CE marked under another directive, pressure equipment bearing relatively low risk is permitted to be CE marked under the Machinery Directive. 

Other options might include that any structural weld can be CE marked, it goes on.............

Edited By Nick Hulme on 30/12/2016 11:02:21

Mr Stevenson, no one is laughing, least of all me. This thread had opened up another interesting topic and by virtue of it reaching five pages is something which clearly interests others, who I suspect are not laughing either! Do others see this as a 'hand grenade post'? I will be quite happy to cease input and also cease designing boilers for members for free if it helps?

I don't think the interesting discussion was certain to ensue from the initial invite to critique the products you haven't seen in person from a seller you haven't had any communication with, that could reasonably be described as above

I don't.

The forum does have a love it / hate it issue though. I rather like the way posts usually ramble off topic even though the deviations can be extraordinary. I think diversity makes the forum more entertaining.

I can easily understand why others dislike the forums thoroughly undisciplined approach to answering technical questions, and the occasional intrusion of ill-judged opinion.

Keeps me amused!

Cheers,

Dave

It's funny how easily noticed it is that the topic of conversation moves around, yet it shouldn't surprise anybody, this is what it naturally does.

Where's the incentive to keep a thread or even the community for that matter going on if every time you post or a thread starts getting quite long, it's immediately laughed at for...simply being there? Am I on a forum after all? that is generally what is supposed to happen.

If nobody's talking on here, and as I have established, talking tends to move around, it's not a book, it's a conversation, then what is the proposal for a forum?

And what is the implication of demanding that every single post follows it's context to the letter? That we aren't fallible people, and are simply to serve the upholding of a robotic type Wikipedia entry system?

I dislike people who only want to know me for what I know, i'm sure a lot of others would feel the same.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 30/12/2016 12:42:48

Yes.

Andrew

Well here's another interesting snippet. - CE marks are no required for one offs.

So anyone can make and supply a single boiler without a CE mark, as long as they don't make and sell that design again.

Neil

I don't think it's a laughing matter Fizzy but on the other hand I don't think this thread will sort it out.

Nick has thrown some interesting light on CE marks. I am sure I have seen comments that in some cases these small boilers must be CE marked. These comments may or may not be correct.

That really sums it up. Also such comments as competent persons, sound engineering practice and other garbage like that. It needs all setting down more clearly. A problem though. In the end the quality of the item will depend on the maker. Go too far and few people will be able to make them because most wont have the qualifications that they would need. Things like materials, good practice and sums for the design side of things plus some no no's that might crop up could be tied down.

A lot of work. Probably why it hasn't been done and as some one mentioned earlier going through the legislated aspects is hard work and they may change periodically. When I look at them I always wonder why there isn't a decision tree to help point to the right parts. Legalised requirements are usually always a pain to go through. Legal speak always tends to finish up like that what ever field it covers.

There is nothing to stop some one from building a boiler for their own use. Some additional information might make that aspect a bit safer. It's the sort of thing I might do at some point which is why I have looked around at the subject. I reckon I can cope via over design anyway based around things that I can easily get rather than a kit.

John

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Exactly what i'd expect, it isn't there to police or deny people the freedom to make their own.

Michael W

Neil - could you please tell us where that information was sourced? I'd be interested in the context.

Michael-w, are You saying "they only want You for Your mind?"

The thing that interests me about this thread is the interpretation of the Category 1 vs "Sound Engineering Practice" group of boilers.

By the letter of the directive, the Juliet boiler should not fall into the Category 1 class. I did not accurately calculate the volume of the boiler, but I did look at the drawing. Doing the sums the boiler has a volume around 1 litre which is well less than the 2 litre limit for sound engineering practice.

Though I've not done the sums, I'm expecting that a 5"G 4-6-0 would be more than the 2 litre limit, and if not that a large 5"G pacific would certainly be so. Obviously these fall into Category 1.

All of the above would be within the scope of an average model engineer. The question is "Should the Juliet boiler be CE marked". Strictly, it should not.

The thing with this is that across the hobby there is uncertainty about the meaning of the CE mark. If the hobby were bigger or more valuable the regulatory authorities would be worried about that. The idea that a broad category of "products" should have ambiguity is not a good thing for the CE marking its self. Certainly, pressure vessels used in specific applications are regulated within those applications for exactly those reasons. The trouble is that it is not worth having a classification solely for model steam locomotive boilers. We as hobbyists get a general framework and it does not fit very well. No-one really cares about the boilermakers. As far as the authorities are concerned, the CE mark is for the hobbyists, not the boilermakers.

My opinion is twofold.

Firstly, setting aside the practical implications, there is no harm in attempting to certify a boiler in a more stringent category. Broadly common sense dictates that as the pressure volume product (bar-litres) increase, the consequence of a boiler failure increases.

In practice, the directive cites different approaches for SEP and Cat 1 boilers, and to me there are elements of both which would be best practice in either other. There are actually no limits, bar the application of the CE mark, to a boilermaker using best practice from one in the other. Equally, there is no mandate for it, so it should not be expected.

In my opinion, this is the wrongness of claiming the "CE mark high ground". What should matter is that it is a good boiler, not that it is CE marked. Perhaps some of the lesson that the directive presents, is that it might be better to buy a boiler without a CE mark if you actually know better.

The second element of my opinion relates to the reasons behind the 0.5 bar and 2 litre limits for safety and SEP. I think that the 0.5 bar limit is fairly obvious. The way I see it is that if the vessel only has 7 (ish) psi inside, it cant do much harm, even if it is made of cheese. Indeed all mice know of the dangers of squashed Emmental. (It's not the exploding bubbles in the cheese that get you!)

I don't know for sure, but I think that the volume limit of 2 litres, has been arrived at to allow for monotube (flash) steam raisers. These are reasonably common in consumer grade products, and are normally seen as safe from explosion. The thing with flash boilers, is that they have no significant volume of liquid water above the boiling point. If a breach were to occur, there is no significant volume of water that would flash to steam.

Obviously the authorities would have the difficulty of onerous regulation over products like flash boilers that do not warrant concern. These authorities must have to draw the line somewhere. In the end I guess they say that 2 litres of water at any temperature cannot cause harm. This is clearly not the case, because in my mind even the Juliet boiler is going to be a little nasty if it actually does go pop.

If you wanted to bend the rules to be as dangerous as possible whilst still being compliant then this would be one loophole to exploit. You can build a 1.99 litre vessel and run it at 100,000 psi, but you don't need a CE marking, even if it is made of Emmental.

Realistically, the Juliet boiler is only a mild form of these boundary cases since it probably only works at 90psi which is around 6 of the potential 25 bars available to boilers of the same size, in Cat 1.

To me, not CE marking a Juliet boiler is classifying it as a flash boiler, which it is not.

Is it wrong to CE mark a Juliet boiler? I don't think so.

Is it wrong to claim the CE mark high ground? Probably.

It's just my opinion.

There is another area that very probably comes into this. It took around 10 secs to find this just searching pressure vessels. There may well be others.

**LINK**

I've no idea if what ever there is about needs to apply.

These may include design aspect as that is probably the most important aspect of the lot. I know of some in other areas that even include the sums needed to ensure that everybody uses the same ones.

Taking Andy's example 1.99L 100,000 psi - nothing wrong with that if it is designed correctly to work like that.

It all comes down to design in the end. Design needs facts not opinions. If those facts aren't available they have to be determined. It seems that the facts in this case are sort of available but some what I usually refer to as a committee decides that aspect isn't relevant to what they have decided off the cuff to do.

John

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