CE and ROHS certifications

[SteveGadlin]

Howdy!

I recently found a distributor that would like to sell my pedal in Europe - but they're asking me for CE and ROHS certifications. To date, I've just been selling my pedal direct from my website - to customers all over the world - with no knowledge of these guidelines.

Can someone recommend a lab that can provide the appropriate testing and certifications for sale in Europe? Is this something that's going to cost me thousands of dollars? Besides losing this EU distributor (I'll make more money selling direct anyway), what are the risks of NOT getting these certifications?

Thanks so much for any help you can provide, and apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place!

 

[Robert]

I'd ask Jon Cusack at Cusack Manufacturing or John Snyder at EAE.

Off the top of my head, if anyone would know it'd be them.

 

[Nostradoomus]

@StompBoxParts
@dunkindonuts

 

[finebyfine]

Tindie might have some resources

 

[Kroars]

Howdy!

I recently found a distributor that would like to sell my pedal in Europe - but they're asking me for CE and ROHS certifications. To date, I've just been selling my pedal direct from my website - to customers all over the world - with no knowledge of these guidelines.

Can someone recommend a lab that can provide the appropriate testing and certifications for sale in Europe? Is this something that's going to cost me thousands of dollars? Besides losing this EU distributor (I'll make more money selling direct anyway), what are the risks of NOT getting these certifications?

Thanks so much for any help you can provide, and apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place!

Pretty sure EU has banned products containing lead, so you’d probably have to use lead free solder, among other component considerations. It may be more trouble than it’s worth, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to look into it.

 

[hamerfan]

As far as i know all used parts must lead free (or allready RoHS certified). My Schatten pickup winder was made with leadfree solder but some of the parts were not certified, so it was not RoHS, so i was told.

 

[dunkindonuts]

Please don't interpret any of this as a substitute for real regulatory or legal advice, but here's my $0.02.

RoHS is trivially easy to self-declare. If every part you source has a document that says its RoHS, you're fine. If you want to be extra careful, you can retain your own copies for each line item on your BOM including the PCB, plus an MSDS for your solder. Optoelectronics like LDRs are under higher scrutiny these days. Can't really do anything about that, they all have cadmium.

CE ultimately comes down to RoHS plus relevant EMC directives. EMC compliance is a deep rabbit hole to go down and lab testing is pricey. You can self-declare, but if you have a fast processor or an SMPS or something you should probably consider at least getting a near field probe and doing some basic measurements to support self declaring.

These regulations, while important, aren't really targeted towards tiny companies (99.9% of solo pedal builders and small-scale independent operations). They're for multimillion dollar juggernauts that will eagerly cut corners and pollute more if it helps their bottom line. It's really not worth the time for regulatory agencies to actively pursue pedals when Amazon, Temu, and Alibaba are facilitating a steady flow of unregulated electronics into every market. That said, if you don't have at least a baseline presentation of compliance you can theoretically be ratted out to the authorities (which, weirdly, can and does happen).

 

[StompBoxParts]

We (StompBoxParts/Cusack) have a lot to learn about this, admittedly. Mid-December, we stopped shipping to the EU because of the new GPSR regulations. With the mix of compliant (any modern RoHS component) and non-compliant parts (lots of NOS parts with lead tinned leads), we don't have the automation or ability to exclude certain parts from being purchased by certain global regions. We didn't do a ton of business in the EU so for our own sake and sanity we simply stopped because it's a deep rabbit hole to dive down and can potentially be very expensive if we want to do everything by the book. Being that we are a small company, we are probably at low-risk if we just ignore everything and ship anyways, but we don't want to roll those dice. We'd rather be informed and do things properly and abide by international laws and regulations. It's unfortunate for our customers in Europe who we are not currently serving at this time.

That said, Cusack Manufacturing IS gearing up to do more lab testing in-house for EU compliance for our pedals, the companies we build for, and possibly offering the service to others looking for compliance testing. It is a big process and we're probably still several months out from being fully set up. I'm not sure how far it will extend to parts at SBP, if at all, unfortunately. Still learning.