Compliance for projects in Australia

[Votality]

Hi,

A number of years ago now (10+) a friend of mine who used to work in tv repair in Australia, but also made custom electronics projects got out of the industry due to diminishing returns of consumer electronics repairs and the costs of getting compliance for custom electronics projects.

Just wondering what regulations and compliance requirements there are for "one off" or small designs selling hundreds of units. I thought I remember him saying that he at-least needed a restricted electrical license (for anything 240v related) and needed each design to be verified (making it uneconomical). Do the regulations apply to audrino type projects with plugin module type designs?

[moffy]

Yeah it is pretty rigorous. Don't know all the details but it is pretty hard to do anything without EMI lab qualification. But projects, like those in Silicon Chip, Jaycar seem exempt. Also it is a complaints based system, I doubt much of what is imported from China would actually qualify. Even the new Waratah trains if you drive by a train line seem to heavily interfere with AM broadcasts, but they still run. It's probably their 3 phase inverter drives, harmonics right in the AM band.

[kjs]

I only know the Australian market from exporting to it. After the US it's one of the easiest to get things there. Opposite to the US it doesn't have these crazy law-suits with completely unpredictable outcome. We refuse to ship anything to the US but sell quite a bit in AUS.
The worst one to sell to is the EU as everything is regulated and customs watches it extremely well........

[sean0118]

I was thinking about this recently, do the regulations change if the device is sold in kit form? If the end users house burns down you could blame it on poor assembly... 

[kjs]

That's the work-around for the EU but the kit must clearly state that it is only approved for assembly by or under the supervision of a person educated in electronics........ Then the user is responsible for meeting regulatory requirements.