When determining the right product and UL specifications for your industry or application, it is important to understand the difference between products that are "UL Listed" and those that are "UL Recognized".
Fundamentally, UL Listed products are fully-functional, stand-alone products or equipment that fit within a specific category or function as defined by Underwriters Laboratories. If a product is labeled as "UL Listed", it has been thoroughly tested to UL industry and safety standards, which can include everything from fire and flame resistance, mechanical function, and potential electrical hazards.
UL Listed goods are labeled with a distinctive seal that indicates that the product has met stringent national safety and sustainability requirements as published by Underwriter Laboratories. Having your product UL listed indicates superior quality and enhances your brand's reputation for safety and accountability.
This is primarily because UL Recognized products are typically parts or components that are manufactured to meet particular industry specifications. These components may be partially complete or have limited operation, as they are intended to be incorporated into larger products or systems. UL Recognition is therefore focused on smaller scale parts and components, rather than UL Listed devices and machinery. We have received your request and will respond promptly. Log In. Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
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Last year alone, about 14 billion products with the UL seal entered the global marketplace. In a nutshell, UL is a safety organization that sets industry-wide standards on new products. UL testing makes sure that wire sizes are correct or devices can handle the amount of current they claim to be able to. They also ensure that products are constructed correctly for the highest safety. A common misconception is that UL tests every product themselves.
Instead, UL authorizes a manufacturer to test the product themselves using the UL stamp. They then follow up on a regular basis to make sure that they are testing their products and following proper guidelines. This is one of many reasons that UL certification is attractive to businesses. While all three are relatively similar to one another, there are some important distinctions. The biggest difference between UL recognition and UL certified or classified is that it does not apply a seal of approval to end products.
UL Recognition service is less consumer-facing and focuses more on machinery and parts that make other products. In other words, it certifies that a component within a larger mechanism meets UL standards. UL Recognition is most often seen in factories, in the form of power supplies or circuit boards that are used to power other machinery.
UL Recognition ensures the safety and efficiency of machinery used by workers. It also empowers companies to strive for more sustainable practices. This may require additional installation precautions to protect the product from chemicals or liquids in the manufacturing process. This is because manufacturers can pick and choose which components are certified within a larger system.
UL recognition is also not as rigid in its industry standards and is, therefore, easier for a business to attain as a result. UL Recognized certification can be applied to any component part, or even to barrier materials. If you want to get the UL logo on your stand-alone products, you must get a UL Listed seal of approval. How does it benefit your business? Rather, in what kind of product is being certified and what impression that has on the consumer. While they both ensure a set of industry standards, they are used for different products and in different capacities.
Underwriters' Laboratories, or UL as it is universally known, tests and evaluates components and products that allows a certification mark to be placed by the manufacturer. However, the meaning of these two marks is sometimes misunderstood and this blog looks to explain their differences in the world of power supplies. We have all been guilty of casually talking about safety agency "approvals" for components and products. While there will be testing agencies around the world that use the term UL approved, the US test and certification agency certainly does not.
In fact, if you look at their website , the only mention of "approvals" is in examples of incorrect terms. UL avoids the word as a way of indicating that it really is the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure safety and that UL only acts as an auditor to check samples and documentation while making factory visits to confirm that procedures are being followed.
The term "certification" is used for some UL marks, but only to communicate that UL has successfully tested a sample product against certain specifications. The term's usage is not meant to imply that it "approves" of the use of the product or component in all potential applications. While UL and other agencies have taken this stance over many years, recent safety standards reinforce the situation and are now less prescriptive about how products are designed and are more concerned with "hazard-based" use cases.
This means that manufacturers must identify how the component or product might present a hazard in its intended application, declare it and test accordingly. Again, the standard is putting the responsibility of safety compliance on the manufacturer to "design it in" and prove it, rather than the safety agency to "test it in" and allow a safety mark.
A basic concept is that "Listing" can only refer to stand-alone products with a specific function, tested against UL's published and nationally-recognized standards for safety for a specific category of equipment. It is argued that power supplies are components - they have no inherent user function, are usually embedded inside other equipment and always need an associated product to perform an end-task. Most power supplies, from on-board dc-dc converters to multi-kilowatt ac-dc power supplies, are classified as "UL Recognized" components.
Power supplies achieve UL recognition by evaluation against particular applicable standards, for example, the familiar UL for IT equipment soon to be superseded by UL , or UL for medical applications.
UL recognition is for all system components down to the board level, so a "UL Recognized" power supply will normally include components that themselves need UL recognition. These could include "X" and "Y" capacitors and any component that crosses a safety isolation barrier or whose failure could cause a hazard.
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