Author Topic: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia  (Read 18422 times)

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Online TERRA Operative

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #25 on: December 23, 2020, 11:04:27 am »
....I did learn, however, to take apart a stereo by that age.
And the instinct not to get my ass beaten has taught me how to put it back together.

Seems that's an experience a lot of us share from our childhood. :D
Where does all this test equipment keep coming from?!?

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Offline KaneTW

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #26 on: December 23, 2020, 03:39:44 pm »
The plastic utensils ban is also a prime example of something no one asked for. Especially considering the replacement is both nonfunctional and harder to recycle, and the actual root cause (lack of recycling, dumping plastic into the ocean instead) isn't addressed.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #27 on: December 23, 2020, 05:48:53 pm »
I dont know if you ever saw a 3-4 year old, but they can throw a glass cup (that they get a hold of somehow) on the floor, swallow a battery and run into the the side of a table in 20 seconds (an start crying). You literally won't notice it happening because you are picking up the shards, so they don't kill your child.

And if you think that: This one was dumb, I just make another one...
No you wont, you will be devastated, crying 20 years later on Christmas eve. These things stay with and ruin a family.

Ah yes, the old "anything for the children!" hyperbolic nonsense argument that can be used as a reason to legislate virtually anything. But the children, what about the children, you'd care if it was your child, one death/injury is too many, etc, etc, it's carte blanche for useless feel-good rules and regulations that almost always have a negative impact on everyone else while having negligible effect on whatever they are actually attempting to do.

The fact is, the vast majority of these useless rules intended to protect children are ineffective at doing just that, and as you indirectly point out, it's essentially futile because small children are very good at getting into trouble, eliminate one threat and they will find something else. Natural selection is going to happen no matter what you do, try to make something idiot proof and the world will evolve a better idiot. It's just a fact that no matter what you do, some people are going to make poor choices and/or experience bad luck and for some it will be the end of the line. The safer you try to mandate everything, the more stupid and careless people will become, already people expect to have warnings and railings around anything that can possibly hurt them and rush out to sue when they do find a way to hurt themselves.

There exists a group of people for whom these sort of regulations seem to innately appeal though. For several years in the early 80s there was a law that cars sold in the US could not have a speedometer that went higher than 80 MPH, as if anyone would stop speeding simply because the needle won't go higher. The legislator who introduced that law said years later that she still believed that it saved lives, despite absolutely no data to suggest that.  :palm:  When I was a teenager one of my friends had a car with the 80 MPH speedo and he used to enjoy pegging the needle, if anything it encouraged speeding because it was possible to peg it all the way at the top while still being well within the capabilities of almost any car. Meanwhile even street legal race cars that some people did actually take to the track were compromised by the lack of a usable speedometer at higher speeds.
 
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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #28 on: December 23, 2020, 05:54:09 pm »
"Can't parents just watch over their children", that's a Shibboleth for detecting people who are not parents. Why, it's as easy as writing bug-free code on the first shot. While doing all the other everyday chores of course.

Nonetheless, there's still something to be said for natural selection. In the last month or so there were two separate cases in my country, where doctors surgically removed open safety pins (!) from the digestive system of babies. Turns out some parents pin charms against "evil eye" to strollers :palm:
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Offline Nauris

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #29 on: December 23, 2020, 06:22:42 pm »
The plastic utensils ban is also a prime example of something no one asked for. Especially considering the replacement is both nonfunctional and harder to recycle, and the actual root cause (lack of recycling, dumping plastic into the ocean instead) isn't addressed.
I have a solution!

World is just so fixed making everything from plastics. I think if single use utencils were made from plain steel plate that would solve most problems. It would provide equal functionality, could be made from recycled material and is easy to recycle after use. And if ever thrown into nature would readily decompose into harmless rust.

And cheap to make too. Some strip of 0.2mm tin-can plate fed into set of progressive carbide dies. First stamp the form then bend edges over to make them round. That could run fast, ten per second per die-set maybe. Maybe some light wax coating to prevent rust.
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #30 on: December 23, 2020, 06:23:06 pm »
Well intentioned, but everything has consequences.  I have personally demonstrated one for this rule more than once.  Most things using coin cells are small and thus the compartment cover and the screw are very small.  When removing the screw it is sometimes launched, or captured by the residual magnetism in the screwdriver or lost by simple poor vision and carelessness.  At the least this eliminates the safety feature and often makes the compartment cover not stable.  So the whole device becomes another addition to the waste stream. 

Other consequences.  The tiny screw also requires a screwdriver not owned by most people buying these things.  Thus the device immediately goes in the waste stream, or a specialist business is created to change the batteries, or a huge market for the screwdrivers is created with all of the hazards associated with that from mining through safe storage of the screwdriver.  These cells are largely used in hearing aids, and those are used most often by the elderly who likely won't be able to deal with the replacement.  That leads to a few hours or days without hearing until a relative or specialist can get the change done, with all sorts of additional health risks from that lack of hearing.  Finally, the risks are low, but a toddler might find and ingest that lost screw from the battery compartment cover.  It can't be good, though probably seldom results in death.

In an ideal world we could calculate how many deaths all of these consequences create.  It is a tiny, but non-zero number and might easily be larger than the number of children killed by these batteries.  But in our real world we have only appeals to emotion and "What about the children?" trumps "WOW, that is a useless and wasteful inconvenience." every time.

 
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Offline Rick Law

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #31 on: December 23, 2020, 06:58:05 pm »
"one child a month"

Yeah so who cares. Natural selection. If we needed to prevent any misuse of any product everything would be forbidden, even spoons.
Nah, if would be a different story, if it would be 12 year olds.
There is a stage in children's development, where they experience the world by putting things into their mouth. It's better at feeling things than their hands. Freud and stuff.
Same way, I slow down and be careful about birds and cats on the road. They have no idea about the danger.
I care less about jaywalkers and cyclists who are breaking the rules. They all know it well what they are doing.

12 year old or 1 month old, it still would be natural selection - based on parental behavior.  Same as a tigress that would not feed the baby tiger, her gene is terminated.

Nature is more cold and efficient than modern human society...
I dont know if you ever saw a 3-4 year old, but they can throw a glass cup (that they get a hold of somehow) on the floor, swallow a battery and run into the the side of a table in 20 seconds (an start crying). You literally won't notice it happening because you are picking up the shards, so they don't kill your child.

And if you think that: This one was dumb, I just make another one...
No you wont, you will be devastated, crying 20 years later on Christmas eve. These things stay with and ruin a family.

Hey, I never said I liked that...  I just repeated a fact that natural selection also work based on parental behavior.

Yeah, it would be devastating to loose a child.  I do know how difficult it is to fully watch a child 7x24.  Nature being what it is, luck also plays a great role.

But, not everything in the world can be fixed by a new law or a new regulation.  As CatalinaWOW pointed out, everything has consequences.  I would add, politicians' cost benefit analysis often fail.  See how a typical politician's net-worth sky rockets after taking office while the society declines.  I must make the assumption that much of what they did, the benefit is to the politicians themselves more so than for society in general.

An EE firm as it is today would need a number of lawyers in the building already.  Keep adding more regulation will eventually disable the entire industry.  There must be some rules.  Where and how we draw the line is the question.
 
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Offline VK3DRBTopic starter

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #32 on: December 23, 2020, 10:53:18 pm »
Well intentioned, but everything has consequences.  I have personally demonstrated one for this rule more than once.  Most things using coin cells are small and thus the compartment cover and the screw are very small.  When removing the screw it is sometimes launched, or captured by the residual magnetism in the screwdriver or lost by simple poor vision and carelessness.  At the least this eliminates the safety feature and often makes the compartment cover not stable.  So the whole device becomes another addition to the waste stream. 

Other consequences.  The tiny screw also requires a screwdriver not owned by most people buying these things.  Thus the device immediately goes in the waste stream, or a specialist business is created to change the batteries, or a huge market for the screwdrivers is created with all of the hazards associated with that from mining through safe storage of the screwdriver.  These cells are largely used in hearing aids, and those are used most often by the elderly who likely won't be able to deal with the replacement.  That leads to a few hours or days without hearing until a relative or specialist can get the change done, with all sorts of additional health risks from that lack of hearing.  Finally, the risks are low, but a toddler might find and ingest that lost screw from the battery compartment cover.  It can't be good, though probably seldom results in death.

In an ideal world we could calculate how many deaths all of these consequences create.  It is a tiny, but non-zero number and might easily be larger than the number of children killed by these batteries.  But in our real world we have only appeals to emotion and "What about the children?" trumps "WOW, that is a useless and wasteful inconvenience." every time.

Very good point about the small screw. I wonder if the legislators even thought about that. Maybe a better idea is to have a latching mechanism that does not use a screw but is child proof that can be tested to standards.

Years ago, Australia used a dangerous 240V mains plug with unshielded 240V active and neutral pins, where toddlers could easily get their fingers in contact with the live pins if the plug was half out of the wall socket. People had been electrocuted due to the bad design of these mains plugs. In about the last 20 years a plug with shielded active and neutral pins has been made mandatory for that very reason. All power cords now have plugs with shielded pins, although through eBay one can import products from China still that uses illegal plugs. There was a time when no-one thought it was dangerous to drive without seat belts. Now they are pretty much required throughout the world - first country to make them mandatory was Australia. Such legislation saved many lives.

Your last paragraph sounds like it came straight from the mouth of Dr Groeteschele.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2020, 10:55:24 pm by VK3DRB »
 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #33 on: December 24, 2020, 02:28:15 am »

Years ago, Australia used a dangerous 240V mains plug with unshielded 240V active and neutral pins, where toddlers could easily get their fingers in contact with the live pins if the plug was half out of the wall socket. People had been electrocuted due to the bad design of these mains plugs. In about the last 20 years a plug with shielded active and neutral pins has been made mandatory for that very reason. All power cords now have plugs with shielded pins, although through eBay one can import products from China still that uses illegal plugs. There was a time when no-one thought it was dangerous to drive without seat belts. Now they are pretty much required throughout the world - first country to make them mandatory was Australia. Such legislation saved many lives.

Your last paragraph sounds like it came straight from the mouth of Dr Groeteschele.

I guess I don't understand the Groeteschele allusion. 

Safety belts were evaluated and there was clear data to show that they reduced overall injuries, even though there were certain circumstances where they increased injury.  A case where data was available better than the appeal to the "What about when I am trapped in my car underwater" emotion.  Same sort of arguments for air bags.  They kill some people but the overall data says that they save lives.  And the situation was improved further when the data was refined to show that the deadly airbag incidents were tied to a particular set of body characteristics and a disarm switch was provided (at least for the front seat passenger) so that those with those characteristics could be made safer.  I am not familiar enough with the Australian shielded pin plug to comment, but will relate that for years there was an ongoing controversy about the safety of twist locking electrical plugs vs the US non-locking standard.  The argument was that the locking plug made partial exposure of the conductors less likely and elimination of machinery shutdowns due to accidental disconnection was a safety plus.  On the other side was an argument that tripping hazards were made more extreme by a non-breakable attachment and that keeping power applied to a piece of machinery that was dropped or moved by a forklift for example was a hazard.  As far as I know there was never data to answer the question and no compelling emotional argument either.  Just faded away over time with the twist lock version virtually disappearing over here.

Perhaps a real data analysis was done on the coin cell issue, though it hasn't made news here in the US.  And here in the US there are quite a few safety rules made without considering whether they actually improve safety.  One that I believe has finally been corrected was one that forbid employers from providing iced or chilled water to their workers.  It had a huge impact on me and my fellow workers as I worked my way through school in and outdoor steel fabrication yard where we didn't really know how hot it was because the available glass bulb thermometers went to the top and popped.  Something well over 120 F.  It finally was recognized that the rule had propagated from a time before mechanical refrigeration, when ice came from lakes and ponds cut and stored during the winter for summer use.  And when no real provisions were made to assure that the ice wasn't cut from animal latrines or contaminated by rodents in storage.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #34 on: December 24, 2020, 03:59:32 am »
I like the twist lock plugs for heavy duty stuff where the cord is a big heavy thing that tugs at the plug even under normal circumstances. I wouldn't want them for small domestic stuff. As far as safety, they only work when they are actually locked, the machine will receive power just by pushing the plug into the socket.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #35 on: December 24, 2020, 01:51:55 pm »
"Can't parents just watch over their children", that's a Shibboleth for detecting people who are not parents. Why, it's as easy as writing bug-free code on the first shot. While doing all the other everyday chores of course.
:-DD

All the toys that used coin cells here at my house had screws on their compartment. You can have all the theories or best guesses about such legislation, but it surely gave us a massive peace of mind that the cells wouldn't pop out at the most inconvenient time or completely out of sight. By the way, try to keep 100% of your attention for 100% of time with twins. Kids have all the time in the world to figure out things, and a simple compartment door with no specific locking mechanism would be surely opened by them. Besides, this phase lasts until 2 or 2-1/2 years old, to which you are able to teach them better to not put everything in their mouths. By the age of 3 my girls were already working with the screwdriver and loved it!

Reversing the tables, if you are an adult that cannot be bothered to buy a set of precision screwdrivers or ask someone to do it, you shouldn't buy these toys. The spring on the batteries compartment would surely be another problem in case these are opened unexpectedly - batteries flying everywhere. For the loose screw argument, that makes sense but there's a reason why you do this away from kids or at the time they are napping - being an item that is replaced only so often, that is a doable procedure.

For the other things that need to be opened and connected more often, such locking mechanism surely irritates me. I've had the medicine containers frustrate me a few times, but these were also effective during this hand to mouth phase (on the occasional dropped container).

Also, several US plugs can have a very tight fit (especially the more commercial/industrial looking types) and they are relegated to be used in extension cords and other applications that are connected for long periods. I never used the chubby european plugs/outlets (UK, Germany) but, if they are hard to insert/pull as they look, then no thanks. However, I find it ironic how the US bashing about their "unsafe" plugs is the norm in these types of discussions, but in a somewhat similar concern the number of incidents is brought up as a reason to ridicule this. Last time I checked the number of electrocutions was rather small...

All in all, I think that bringing this to the table generates the discussion and, at least with the already severely regulated toy market, this is just one more fib to add.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2020, 10:59:55 pm by rsjsouza »
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #36 on: December 24, 2020, 06:14:15 pm »
Had an interesting thought last night about a possibly better way to make the coin or button cells safe.  Just coat them with a self sealing elastomer.  Which requires battery compartments to have appropriate prongs to penetrate the elastomer, a not particularly challenging problem - except for already fielded designs.  These can be used by application of a bit of sandpaper. 

This mitigates the hazard which is two fold.  The electrolysis and its byproducts which occurs in the gut.   And since the battery is not shorted and run down, it is unlikely to leak during its passage through the gut eliminating the second part of the hazard.  This solution also mitigates the risk of batteries before installation in the various applications and old batteries that didn't make it into a safe container before disposal.

There is still the problem of mechanical blockage of the gut, but that is no more severe than any of the myriad of other swallowable size objects in the world from pebbles to game pieces to .....
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #37 on: December 24, 2020, 06:23:55 pm »
I've actually seen quite a few of those screwed shut battery covers missing the screw, with a piece of tape holding them shut instead which defeats the purpose. At the very least they should have a captive screw.

Either way it's pointless, it should be obvious to anyone here that a small child can operate a screwdriver easily as most of us in engineering probably got in trouble at least a few times as young kids for taking things apart. It took a number of years before I had perfected the art of putting them back together.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #38 on: December 24, 2020, 07:28:19 pm »
I hate those screwed shut battery compartments, I was just talking to my friend about that the other day, it had never occurred to me that it was some kind of a legal requirement. I also hate "child proof" packaging, what a joke, I still remember when I was about 4 years old my grandmother used to ask me to open her medication bottles for her because she had difficulty with the "child proof" caps while my small nimble hands could open them without difficulty.
When I was a very little kid, my mom had a few years where she was getting really bad migraines. (Not my fault, I swear!) Anyhow, one time, my mom got a migraine and was too delirious with pain to negotiate the childproof cap. I couldn’t get it open, so she grabbed a hammer and smashed the bottle to smithereens and then pulled some pills out of the wreckage to take. 😂 

(I don’t remember what kind of cap it was, i.e. whether it relied more on adult dexterity or hand strength, but I couldn’t get it open. How they expect the elderly to open them is beyond me.)
 

Offline KaneTW

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #39 on: December 24, 2020, 07:30:29 pm »
I find UK plugs to be overkill (a fuse _in the plug_ is too much, and they're unpleasantly pointy and heavy). Out of all plugs I've used, I've found Schuko to be the most comfortable. Secure fit, rounded prongs, ground easily accessible and guaranteed to make first contact. US plugs are by far my least favorite -- flimsy, exposed metal that you could easily touch with a finger, etc.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #40 on: December 24, 2020, 07:35:02 pm »

There exists a group of people for whom these sort of regulations seem to innately appeal though. For several years in the early 80s there was a law that cars sold in the US could not have a speedometer that went higher than 80 MPH, as if anyone would stop speeding simply because the needle won't go higher. The legislator who introduced that law said years later that she still believed that it saved lives, despite absolutely no data to suggest that.  :palm:  When I was a teenager one of my friends had a car with the 80 MPH speedo and he used to enjoy pegging the needle, if anything it encouraged speeding because it was possible to peg it all the way at the top while still being well within the capabilities of almost any car. Meanwhile even street legal race cars that some people did actually take to the track were compromised by the lack of a usable speedometer at higher speeds.
Real law, wrong explanation: it had nothing to do with safety, it was because of the fuel crisis. It was to encourage fuel savings (which it failed at, FWIW).

http://classic-car-history.com/85-mph-speedo.htm
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #41 on: December 24, 2020, 07:51:12 pm »
I find UK plugs to be overkill (a fuse _in the plug_ is too much, and they're unpleasantly pointy and heavy). Out of all plugs I've used, I've found Schuko to be the most comfortable. Secure fit, rounded prongs, ground easily accessible and guaranteed to make first contact. US plugs are by far my least favorite -- flimsy, exposed metal that you could easily touch with a finger, etc.
The fuse in UK plugs isn’t “too much”, it’s absolutely essential because behind those sockets are  circuits rated (and fused) for 32A. So instead of requiring every appliance to have a cord as thick as a garden hose, the plug is fused to prevent normal-size appliance cords from catching on fire if the appliance should short out.

I rather dislike the Schuko plug, IMHO it’s far too large and heavy for what it does. (Yes, it’s smaller than UK plugs, but that’s not setting the bar very high! :P)

Good quality US plugs and sockets are very nice to use. (Sadly, most US household sockets are cheap, and loosen over time. Nobody, and I mean nobody, follows the manufacturers’ recommendation to regularly replace them every 10 years. Commercial and industrial-grade sockets (of the same plug type) are designed to handle FAR more insertion cycles without loosening.) As far as safety, I don’t think they’ve proven to be hugely dangerous in practice. But I’d love to see them adopt semi-insulated prongs — the Australian plug has flat prongs almost identical in width and thickness, and they’ve been semi-insulated for years.

Honestly, I actually think Switzerland has one of the nicest residential plug designs. It’s compact, attractive, and safe, and has a really clever system of backward compatible 3-phase sockets. (Not an issue of national pride: I’m an American living here.) Brazil’s new socket is nearly identical, but with different spacing that makes it incompatible. Brazil’s design, in turn, is a slightly modified version of an international socket standard that never got implemented anywhere.
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #42 on: December 24, 2020, 08:04:58 pm »
And here in the US there are quite a few safety rules made without considering whether they actually improve safety.
That’s everywhere: politicians need to be seen as “doing something about [problem]” so they pass a law addressing that one thing without evaluating follow-on effects or the big picture in general.

One that I believe has finally been corrected was one that forbid employers from providing iced or chilled water to their workers.  It had a huge impact on me and my fellow workers as I worked my way through school in and outdoor steel fabrication yard where we didn't really know how hot it was because the available glass bulb thermometers went to the top and popped.  Something well over 120 F.  It finally was recognized that the rule had propagated from a time before mechanical refrigeration, when ice came from lakes and ponds cut and stored during the winter for summer use.  And when no real provisions were made to assure that the ice wasn't cut from animal latrines or contaminated by rodents in storage.
Citation needed.

By the time the US started passing food safety and workplace safety laws, ice harvesting was already dead, since mechanical refrigeration had fully replaced harvested ice with manufactured ice.

What is true is that ice water can be dangerous in extremely hot environments. For that reason, some employers might have chosen to not offer it. That or they were cheapskates.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #43 on: December 24, 2020, 10:23:41 pm »
An EE firm as it is today would need a number of lawyers in the building already.  Keep adding more regulation will eventually disable the entire industry.  There must be some rules.  Where and how we draw the line is the question.
Oh, I know about this, trust me. <--- that's my job.
I have to put warning signs on the electronics:
"Do not open when an explosive atmosphere is present"
I usually have 3-4 warning labels on it, one is not to rub the plastic parts, because it might be ecstatically charged. Most of them is ridiculous, unrealistic for the most cases. I mean who is going to take a screwdriver and disassemble some electronics device, standing in the middle of a propane cloud, right? The testing for this kind of equipment is expensive and long, and your product usually needs some sort of modification. And that's fine, at least I sleep well.

Because all these things (even that tiny screw sealing the battery compartment) cost time and money. And that's something that companies hate to spend. If you can skip some sort of safety measure, there will be a manager, who tells you (the product designer) to skip it. It could be industrial electronics for dangerous areas or a toy train, it could kill people. As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #44 on: December 25, 2020, 06:59:15 am »
As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.

Bullshit. There needs to be some regulation, but there is already way, way too much regulation in the world and much of it does nothing BUT cause headaches. Over-regulation ruins products that could be good, and takes perfectly good products that worked off the market and replaces them with crap. Want a specific example? Try using one of the idiotic CARB-compliant portable gas (petrol) cans that are mandated across the USA now. They are not allowed to have a vent (because vapor may escape) and they are required to be "child proof". The result is cans that blow up like a balloon if left in the sun then spray gasoline vapor everywhere when you manage to release the nozzle, an act which usually requires 3 hands. Then because there can't be a vent, as gas pours out the air has to go in the nozzle so they go GLUG gurgle gurgle GLUG gurgle GLUG and dump gas all over the place when trying to fill the small tanks on portable equipment. If you want to use one to put gas in a car forget it, the stupid nozzles won't fit properly in a lot of car gas fillers, and if you do manage to get it in they flow so slowly that your arm will fall off trying to hold the thing up. They are absolutely useless garbage that accomplish the exact opposite of everything they the new regulation was supposed to do. It's so bad that an array of companies sprouted up selling "water jugs" and nozzles for said jugs which are quite obviously gas cans but can't be sold as such. I HATE excessive safety regulations, I'd roll back a huge range of regulations given the chance. If you want to buy some overly regulated headache inducing piece of crap that is your right, but don't force it on me.

 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #45 on: December 25, 2020, 07:03:11 am »
The fuse in UK plugs isn’t “too much”, it’s absolutely essential because behind those sockets are  circuits rated (and fused) for 32A. So instead of requiring every appliance to have a cord as thick as a garden hose, the plug is fused to prevent normal-size appliance cords from catching on fire if the appliance should short out.

The cords aren't the size of a garden hose. It's perfectly legal to have an appliance plugged into a 20A, or even a 30A or larger circuit with a piddly little 18AWG cord, it is up to the appliance to be fused appropriately that it can't burn up the cord. A fused plug would be preferable but we don't typically have them here except on christmas lights. I don't recall ever having a cord burn up though, a short circuit on the end of a light duty cord will still pop a 20A breaker easily.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #46 on: December 25, 2020, 12:54:38 pm »
Either way it's pointless, it should be obvious to anyone here that a small child can operate a screwdriver easily as most of us in engineering probably got in trouble at least a few times as young kids for taking things apart. It took a number of years before I had perfected the art of putting them back together.
James, the problem here is access, not ability. Infants are surrounded by toys and not screwdrivers. Besides, it is neither obvious nor true without a lot of training. When my girls were introduced to the screwdrivers, they couldn't remove a single bit even after tens of times trying. We don't realize, but there is a large number of very fine adjustments to the process (downward pressure, speed, dexterity with the small fingers) that we learned and became second nature, but for them it is quite difficult without assistance. Sure, by the age of four they had most of details mastered but, by then, eating things at random is not a problem anymore.

It's perfectly legal to have an appliance plugged into a 20A, or even a 30A or larger circuit with a piddly little 18AWG cord, it is up to the appliance to be fused appropriately that it can't burn up the cord.
You are correct, but I still look somewhat favourably to the fuse in the plug, despite the increase in size. This could prevent issues with frayed cords (a not uncommon occurrence) and it would be helpful to prevent a problem at the point of entry, not inside the appliance. However, there would need to have more than one value and not a standardized 13A rating (which I think the UK is set for, but correct me if I am wrong) to address the puny "lamp cord" 18AWG sizes. 

It is the old adage that "fuses/breakers protect the wiring, not the appliance".
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Offline Monkeh

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #47 on: December 25, 2020, 01:04:32 pm »
It's perfectly legal to have an appliance plugged into a 20A, or even a 30A or larger circuit with a piddly little 18AWG cord, it is up to the appliance to be fused appropriately that it can't burn up the cord.

What you call 'perfectly legal' is not a legal matter nor necessarily compliant with the appropriate standards of other countries. This is called 'downstream fusing', which is generally considered appropriate when the cable is reasonably protected from mechanical damage.
 

Online magic

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #48 on: December 25, 2020, 01:53:23 pm »
the most regulation there is, the better

that's my job
Honesty appreciated :P

I would have no problem with such ban limited to toys for small kids, but if it ever applies to anything I use regularly, it's going to be noncompliant alternatives from AliExpress for me.
I hope the sole end result will just be less stuff imported to Australia. Legally imported, at least.
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Coin cell safety improvement a world first in Australia
« Reply #49 on: December 25, 2020, 05:41:59 pm »
As a design engineer, the most regulation there is, the better. Even if it causes headaches sometimes.

Bullshit. There needs to be some regulation, but there is already way, way too much regulation in the world and much of it does nothing BUT cause headaches. Over-regulation ruins products that could be good, and takes perfectly good products that worked off the market and replaces them with crap. Want a specific example? Try using one of the idiotic CARB-compliant portable gas (petrol) cans that are mandated across the USA now. They are not allowed to have a vent (because vapor may escape) and they are required to be "child proof". The result is cans that blow up like a balloon if left in the sun then spray gasoline vapor everywhere when you manage to release the nozzle, an act which usually requires 3 hands. Then because there can't be a vent, as gas pours out the air has to go in the nozzle so they go GLUG gurgle gurgle GLUG gurgle GLUG and dump gas all over the place when trying to fill the small tanks on portable equipment. If you want to use one to put gas in a car forget it, the stupid nozzles won't fit properly in a lot of car gas fillers, and if you do manage to get it in they flow so slowly that your arm will fall off trying to hold the thing up. They are absolutely useless garbage that accomplish the exact opposite of everything they the new regulation was supposed to do. It's so bad that an array of companies sprouted up selling "water jugs" and nozzles for said jugs which are quite obviously gas cans but can't be sold as such. I HATE excessive safety regulations, I'd roll back a huge range of regulations given the chance. If you want to buy some overly regulated headache inducing piece of crap that is your right, but don't force it on me.

Amen to that!  Those damned gas can nozzles are truly terrible.  I've probably spilled more gasoline from cans fitted with those bloody things than I EVER did with conventional nozzles.  (And I still have and use several cans with conventional nozzles to this day.)  Politicians and bureaucrats can almost always be counted on to provide a solution that's as bad if not worse in some other way than the 'issue' they're trying to address.  This is a prime example - problem: escaping gas fumes bad, require a stupid nozzle design.  Result: no fumes leak when the can is sitting in storage (BTW, my cans with normal nozzles have caps that prevent this too, I just need to screw them back on after using the can), but raw gas is spilled nearly every time the can is used due to the lousy nozzle.  Net effect: more gas evaporates than otherwise would, and cans are aggravating to use.  Great job, morons!

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 
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