all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

[rong111]

hi all,

i just took six of the same product out of
service. all made by johnlight in china. all ul listed. all of an obviously dangerous design.

i thought that the ul stamp did not go on items that even a monkey would know are dangerous?
i am not getting down on ul. i simply am looking for a way to keep these horribly made chinese items out of the us. nothing against china either. just their cheap rechargeable flashlights.

all of these failed by flashing(fire). they come overlamped and melt a transistor on the pc board in turn causing a flash. is it possible it is a bogus ul stamp? these were sold by a major retail outlet(now bankrupt, go figure).


ron g.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Ron,
Where was the UL sticker on the product? Many times a manufacturer will use a codr with a UL sticker implying that the product itself is UL listed, when in fact only the power cord was listed.
Don

 

[roger]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Ron, another consideration is, this is posibily a counterfit listing.

Go here and take notice of this sentence.

The UL Listing Mark and the UL Mark for Canada may appear on the product and packaging. The UL Listing Mark and UL Mark for Canada is not authorized and the product is not considered Listed by UL or, its affiliate, Underwriters Laboratories of Canada (ULC).

Roger

 

[tony_psuee]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

You can always try the UL website, www.ul.com. The online search for product certification is free.

Tony

 

[rong111]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

thanks guys.

they are ul listed! that is scary.
the problem with this thing is that it is overlamped. it uses a 120v. 3.25t-screw base 2.4w bulb. if the circuit converted the voltage to 12v. and used a regular flashlight bulb that would work fine. there is actually 12v. present on the pc board. so this is just a poor cheap design. that little bulb generates tremendous heat for its size. it then melts components on the pc board and it flashes.

i am going to call a friend at ul and see if i can get them to look at again or something.
i realize it is just one item amongst many, but if i can contribute to one less dangerous item on the street i will be happy.


thank you,
ron g.

 

[jimwalker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

How many homes might have that bad gfci recepticle?Just who will contact them.I for one have installed hunreds of gfci and have no record of what brand/model was used in each house

 

[charlie tuna]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

i know a guy who began making power poles for docks--- he had to have them ul rated. so he built this unit and submitted it - after much testing - he had to add some spray shields here and there.. but he got his ul rating. now, i'm watching them make these things - in a supply house (plenty of materials) using the supply house people as needed. not one person there with a day of electrical expeiriance. everybody doing something different in the way they put a power pole together-----but that little "ul" sticker was always placed in the same place on everyone of them!!!!!!!!!! so i don't worked up over something thats "ul" listed----the one they tested was-------but who knows the ones after that are anyone's guess!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[tom baker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

There are counterfeit UL labeled products being imported. UL is quite concerned, and if you were to contact them I am sure they would be interested. I seem to remember a recall on GFCI's that were counterfeit.

 

[roger]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Tom, go here http://www.ul.com/media/newsrel/nr102903.html

Roger

 

[rong111]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

the ul website says this product is listed under a blanket listing of many similar products from this company. i didn't really beleive that a ul rating meant something was fool proof. however i just don't like seeing unsafe products. there must be millions of these lights and other items that are unsafe in wide use. the best i can do is tell people not to use them. i did call a friend at ul and he said that it is a real big deal to get the product retested and they probably wouldnt do it. however, he said that the product test data passed the required "burn in period" without failure. i stated these lamps failed after many many hours. that must be beyond the scope of ul. they cant test for every last scenario. i just have something against countries or anyone that imports items with cost as the only consideration without one care of safety.
beyond being upset about this i guess there is nothing i can do.


ron g.

 

[batch]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

We are a UL shop and subcontract for UL shops. I can say that not one of the products that gets shipped into our shop would pass a thorough inspection.

As for our shop. UL labels are not put on the product until it is being loaded on the truck. The UL inspectors are told nothing that will be labeled is being worked on right now...

UL labels might be usefull after an incident as far as showing that the manufacturer did not follow his own listing. Other then that I don't place much faith in them...

 

[jimwalker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

The idea of counterfit UL is new to me.I guess i am foolish in the fact that i don't even look for the UL approved sticker.Gee i mean if we bought material from a reputable supply house i assume it is ligit UL.Just how can we determine in the field if this is UL forgery????

 

[tonyi]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

With this country doing so much trade with the far east, this is only going to become a bigger and bigger problem. That whole area is rife with counterfeit products of all sorts.

Now its just a bogus UL label, at some point its going to be knock off copies of Leviton, P&S, etc where the products physical aspects, packaging, paperwork, etc have been duplicated. They're very good at doing this with software - Microsoft spends a lot of time tracking down bootleg stuff where they've even copied the holograms on the boxes.

Imagine the confusion, callbacks, and hazzards a couple of container loads of electrically marginal faked Leviton GFCI's could cause being dumped into the supply stream.

This has been going on for a while now with aircraft/helicopter replacement parts. Fakes are made from low grade materiels, or salvaged from crashed planes and sold as new. A few years ago the Army got a load of bogus M1 Abrams parts from some supplier that were failing in the field at abnormally high rates.

Will someone remind me why we gave the PRC MFN trading status again?!?!

 

[jimwalker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

This is upsetting,we think we bought quality UL listed items and could be getting into a major disaster.What happens if we use bogus 14-2 and it goes bad? i see companies going bankrupt

 

[tonyi]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Hooking up a water heater a few years ago I encountered a length of bad 10-2 from SouthWire that had a dead short in it internally somewhere. I wasn't happy.

I've stripped off sheath that looked a bit lumpy and found tape under the sheath over a bad spot where someone ripped the heck out of the conductor insulation at the factory and covered up their goof rather than junk a run as damaged (again, this was SouthWire)

Got a coil of 14-2 AC last year that had the bond wire twisted up along with the conductors in a way that caused it to be making no contact with the armor.

 

[jimwalker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Had a piece of 6-2 aluminum for range (back in the 3 wire days ) On hot check had open hot.
At first wanted to blame other trades (drywall screws)I didn't handle this good. I removed the wire and after much time found the problem.At factory they took black tape to connect the start of a new wire when they ran out.Not even an attempt to splice.This kind of thing happens in factories.I should have done 2 things ,the first is take it to management level as the numbers on wires tell them everything down to what shift did this(not that would do much good).Other thing was to maybe cut it in atic and see what half was bad and possibly splice in a new piece.But even as cheap as i am that would not be the right way to go.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Jim,
The tape was not an atempt to make an electrical splice in the conductor. They do this to keep the process of extruding the jacket onto the conductors continuous. They would normally keep track of where this "splice" is located and cut out that section when the wire is spooled for shipment. Sometimes, they misplace the cut and you end up with an open conductor.
Don

 

[hurk27]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Not to take the thread sideways but I have had several 10/2 N/M romxes's go bad after removing them I found that the manufacture had butt spliced the hot conductor in the middle of the run. (under the outer jacket) I saved a few of these and showed them to the AHJ and he took them to UL. At the time UL allowed this as long as a irreversible connector was used it was OK but in lite of these findings they reversed this as this type of crimp connector was not listed for crimping solid type conductors and could of caused a fire. I have not seen this after this was reported.

[ January 11, 2004, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: hurk27 ]

 

[jimwalker]

Re: all this time i misunderstood what ul means?

Hurk,guess i was just lucky.
Nothing says i didn't get some of that wire,just not a problem over it.
In my case the outcome was exactly the same

We pay full price and receive garbage.
Had promlems over switches made by a certain mfg
Stopped using there products any time i could .
Wont use there name but started with E