Ul 50

Our UL inspector (not my favorite guy anyway) Is refusing to rate some control panels because some door mounted devices do not meet UL-50.

They are UL-508 and are listed in our file. They are NEMA 12/4 rated. According to the inspector (a worthless pedantic git) manufacturers must submit the devices to UL for testing, as apparently NEMA is not good enough.

I've felt UL-508 was a racket for a long time, and this UL-50 is clearly a revenue generating gold mine (non-profit my butt). However, I'd like to know how many of you are experiencing this, what the rationalization for it is, and how long it has gone on.

his ball, his rules

Tom Jenkins said:

Our UL inspector (not my favorite guy anyway) Is refusing to rate some control panels because some door mounted devices do not meet UL-50.

They are UL-508 and are listed in our file. They are NEMA 12/4 rated. According to the inspector (a worthless pedantic git) manufacturers must submit the devices to UL for testing, as apparently NEMA is not good enough.

I've felt UL-508 was a racket for a long time, and this UL-50 is clearly a revenue generating gold mine (non-profit my butt). However, I'd like to know how many of you are experiencing this, what the rationalization for it is, and how long it has gone on.

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I sense you are frustrated.


Yeah, well, if your client wants a UL sticker, you gotta listen to your UL guy. It is a bit of a racket, for sure, and maybe, if you register with them, and pay your 'dues' once a year, they'll be easier on you.

Easier to comply than fight. If not this, then something else. Just be happy you don't have to do a SCCR study.

As a matter of principle I understand the desire to fight. I can't remember if you guys are a 508 shop or not but UL goes to great lengths to make sure you know that although NEMA and UL "types" use the same nubers that they do not recognize any self certified standards and so they do not accept NEMA ratings.

You could bite the bullet and replace the devices. You could fight the inspectors claim and likely lose or you could go to someone like ETL (not sure of the name) and try to get it certified throuh them (and pay less)

UL and CSA is a rip off

It is extortion and adds nothing to the value of the product.

In our case our controller runs off 24 volts. There should be an exemption for low voltage or low power devices.

I have to agree with Peter. And what is worse, UL's price have gone up and their service has gone way down in the last couple of years. It's got to the point where they will charge you a fortune to make a simple mod to a file, because they feel that this is how much 'value' it is worth to you.

jdbrandt said:

Yeah, well, if your client wants a UL sticker, you gotta listen to your UL guy. It is a bit of a racket, for sure, and maybe, if you register with them, and pay your 'dues' once a year, they'll be easier on you.

Easier to comply than fight. If not this, then something else. Just be happy you don't have to do a SCCR study.

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We are a 508 shop, and the components in question are 508 rated, just not "UL-50". We are on about the third inspector in two years.

Besides the cathartic effect of a good rant (and I agree with Peter wholeheartedly) I have two objectives:

First, I'd like to know when this went into effect, so I have a basis for going back to the customer for a variance.

Second, I would like to know if I have to start a campaign with all of my front panel component suppliers and find out what their status is. A quick reading makes it look like only the enclosures should be covered - if someone can clarify I'd appreciate it.

From the UL site: http://ulstandardsinfonet.ul.com/scopes/scopesnew.asp?fn=0050.html

This looks like enclosures, not HMI's and disconnects.

Although I have not had to do this because my inspector is not a goon, you can certify your box as "UL Type 1" and then in another location put a sticker on it that says "NEMA Type 12" I would especially like to be there when you tell him that your customers don't really care whether it is UL or NEMA.

I have now had a chance to look at the standard and ran around in circles before giving up. He must be looking in the SA table at 19.3 Exception but heck if I can see for sure what he means.

ndzied1 said:

you can certify your box as "UL Type 1" and then in another location put a sticker on it that says "NEMA Type 12" I would especially like to be there when you tell him that your customers don't really care whether it is UL or NEMA.

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Thanks, Norm. The dual label is a great idea, but I'm going to have to convince the consulting engineer of the logic. This is a large A&E firm, and they are not known for creative and pragmatic thinking, although this specific guy is prtetty good. He does rely on his electrical subconsultant, though, and the sub may need some persuasion.

I thoroughly enjoy Tom Jenkins pertinent comments regarding his UL inspector. We are a UL508 shop and have experienced similar frustrations over the last 15 years.

My question from his original post is "what UL rating are you trying to achieve?"
A complete UL Listed enclosure OR one that complies with UL508A standards.

We have had similar issues with front mounted components in the past and were able to satisfy our customers requirements for UL508A by listing just the back panel and its associated components as UL508A Open Control Panel vs a complete UL508A Enclosure.

All seems rather pointless but that allowed us to pass muster and ship the equipment.

My 2 cents

Tom Jenkins said:

A quick reading makes it look like only the enclosures should be covered ...

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I agree, it looks like UL50 only applies to to a plain enclosure. After you modify it, UL508 becomes the governing standard.
In UL508A-2001 (the one at my desk) it was in section 18.3 (Enclosures). And 19.3 (Enclosure openings) talked about what component ratings can be mounted into which types of enclosures. An exception to 19.3 allows non-UL rated components to be submitted for testing under UL50.

Peter Nachtwey said:

In our case our controller runs off 24 volts. There should be an exemption for low voltage or low power devices.

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I thought there were exceptions for low voltage?! Or is it the case of if it is withing a UL panel, everything must be UL?

There are no exceptions

In our case it is mostly a paper work shuffle. It costs us $6800 a year but we have fewer products than Red Lion. We have one inspection for UL/CSA every quarter and it cost $1200 and there is a $2000/year fee for just being. The inspector simply makes sure critical parts are on their approved list. I was told it takes another $300 per category our product is listed under.
That is a LOT of money for 4 inspections that take only a few hours. Don't tell me they don't make money. If not then where does it go?

Obviously we pass this cost on to the customers because it is the customers that want UL even though it does nothing for them. It may make things easier for those that build panels using our controller because I am sure the UL inspector looks at the devices in the panel to see if they are certified UL but this is how the extortion is perpetuated.

This is big barrier to very small companies that want to make products. This is a fixed cost. Fortunately we got started a long time ago when this wasn't such a big issue and sawmills we simply glad to have some way of controlling the motion of logs and saws. I don't think our original Multibus and VMEbus motion controllers were UL approved but not the RMCs are. Now we have the volume to spread the cost over enough products so it doesn't hurt too much.

Our stuff is low power. In fact we chose to make our stuff as low power as possible because power means heat which reduces reliability or cooling that increases costs. We recently got our controller certified class 1 div2 or something like that for use in the oil and gas fields. That cost about $20000 for the tests but we didn't need to make any changes to the design because our designs are low power. Still this is yet another fee and if we are safe around oil and gas then why do we need a UL certification that doesn't mean much of anything. The same goes for CE. CE is a tougher standard but still we must now have all these multiple certifications.

We will be free when everyone says we are going to take it.

J-Ho said:

I thought there were exceptions for low voltage?! Or is it the case of if it is withing a UL panel, everything must be UL?

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What you are talking about is not an exception but part of the standard. I hate to be a paragraph weenee but 43.2.1 says that components and wiring located entirely within the low-voltage limited energy circuit are not required to be investigated.

Basically < 100VA of power where your voltage is < 30VAC or 42.4DC with a max of 5A. So it depends on the source and how it is protected.

If I power my RMC from a 4A 24V source, I can UL508 the panel even if the RMC is not UL. If I power it off of a 10A 24V source, I can't UL508 the panel unless the RMC is UL.

Theoretically, on a low voltage limited energy circuit, I could put an open knife switch shorting power to ground and they can't ding me for it (Although this is a quick way to lose customers).

There is a little more to it so please, nobody go build a panel and put the "Norm Said it's OK" sticker on it. But the basic idea here is that the limited energy circuit cannot provide enough energy to blow something up.

Another thing to remember is that GFCI breakers are our friend. According to our UL trainer, who actually has a brain, in essence if you put a GFCI on a circuit you can hang the leads in a bucket of gasoline and meet 508.

That doesn't help with the UL-50 issue, though, which essentially comes down to a p#$%^&g conttest between UL and NEMA. The enclosure is rated NEMA 12, but with our front panel devices the inspector will only rate it UL-1. That's the starting point for this rant, and why I need to get some history and background to go to the customer's engineer for a variance.

We spent about $170K last year with UL. This has more than tripled over the last few years. We have certainly been doing more approvals, but most of the increase is due to their new pricing policy whereby they charge you what amounts to what they can get away with. I actually had a UL rep sit in my conference room and explain that, while it might only take a short amount of time to shuffle paper in the file and add another model to an approval, it would actually enable us to get many tens of thousands of dollars in new business, and that UL's pricing ought to reflect that. To me, this is borderline extortion, and I pretty much told them so.

In fact, one year, they plonked a large UL sign on our tradeshow booth at ISA without asking us, so I took it down, and then took it home and shot a few holes in it. It lived in our reception for a while, bullet holes and all, together with a sticker commenting that this was what we thought of their new pricing policy. Eventually, the rep saw it, and head office was informed. Although there were dark mumbles about legal repercussions, in the end we got a visit from a VP, who was a most reasonable chap and promised to work with us. Unfortunately, they fired him, so that was the end of that. Sigh.

As another example of UL nonsense, we're currently trying to get the new G310V2 units approved for Class I Div 2. Everything was going great, until they suddenly decided they needed to see the schematics of the inverter modules that drive the display. Strange, we said, you didn't ask for those last time you approved a unit. Oh, well, that wasn't right, comes back the answer. So, either they're incompetent this time, or they were incompetent last time. Either way, it sucks, and either way, we're weeks and weeks late launching a product simply because UL is taking their sweet time doing their thing.

In the end, of course, we get through it, but as Peter said, it's ridiculously burdensome for smaller companies, and imposes a barrier to innovation that harms the economy. There was an op-ed in ISA's magazine last year that made exactly that point, and I have to wonder how many other business people are coming to the same conclusion.