Discuss Electrics for a sunbed in the Commercial Electrical Advice area at ElectriciansForums.net

Welcome to ElectriciansForums.net - The American Electrical Advice Forum
Head straight to the main forums to chat by click here:   American Electrical Advice Forum

Reaction score
2
Hi all,

(First post and I'm not an electrician).

I'm trying to manufacture a sunbed. By picking the brains of the very helpful and knowledgeable people at UV logistics I now know what electrical parts are needed and they can supply. Cad/cam drawings for the bed are done. I now need an electrical designer to design the wiring harness.

Is this a specialised job? Would I need someone who knows about sunbeds already? Where would I go to find the right person?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers Chris
 
Hi, welcome to the forum, this kind of design wouldn't fall under the BS7671 to which the forum and most members are knowledged in having said that we do have many members that may be able to help and offer direction and/or advice.
I suspect this would fall under the machine control directory BS60204 although I am happy to be corrected on that.
I would suspect there are some pretty strict regulations surrounding sunbeds given they can cause serious damage if the malfunction, this is not a project you should be trying to do yourself here, you will need someone to come in design and commission the controls and take responsibility for the safety of the bed.
Is this for personal use or are you intending others to use it in say a commercial/business manner?
 
Hi, It's a commercial proposition. It will be a 10 lamp sunbed for home use that I will be selling. I'm going to manufacture it myself by subcontracting out all the fabrication and I will just screw the thing together. Cad/cam drawing are all done.

The strict regulations I think you are talking about are for regulating the output of UV. I have that in hand. I will make sure that the bed is what is called 0.3 compliant.

Here is a youtube videos which gives an idea of what is involved in the wiring:
"Changing a lamp holder on a tanning bed". You can see the wiring at 1.10 then 1.19. The T12 lamp holder I will be getting is different to those shown in the video because it's a lamp holder/starter holder combined.

The lamp supplier will supply all the correct lamps, and lamp holders, starters and ballast for those lamps. So I think the circuit is this: mains, timer, ballast, lamp holders/starters. The lamp holders are lamp holder/starter holder combined.

I think the wiring harness is a pretty simple thing to design for someone who knows what they are doing but I'm not looking to make any short cuts. I want to find someone who is properly qualified to do this.

Cheers Chris
 
So you are planning to sell this product in the UK .......... you need to seek out all the approvals etc first ............. its not so simple as bolting it together ........
 
The UV output was not what I was discussing here, what you are doing is trying to produce a product on a budget, how are you going to raise a CE mark and ensure it is both mechanically and electrically safe, anyone with basic knowledge could probably design and get working a crude control but it will be extremely unlikely to comply with industry regulations.
There will be no question in my mind that you have to employ an element of fail safe into the design, if you solely wanted this for personal use you may get around skipping all the hoops you have to jump through to legally sell this product, but trying to build and design it for commercial reasons would require a much larger input of time and money and compliance with all local and EU regulations that this bed will fall under, what particularly scares me here is you are trying to do this through YouTube vids and Forum Q&A, you really need to employ a fully compliant person/company to design the control system and who are able to sign off their part in the design and add weight to your later attempt to get it CE stamped, this is likely to blow your budget out of the water and is the reason why many good ideas and products never get to market stage.
There would be too many questions to ask and I'm sure the answers you give will just inflate that number, so as a forum we really can only offer safe advice and unfortunately this will not be advice on how to design the electrical controls, harnesses etc, my personal advice is if you want to get this to market is look for companies/persons who design and commission control systems who will be fully knowledged in safety standards, supplying all the relevant documentation, wiring plans etc and will put their name to the design, you will then need to bring in a third party if they cannot do it themselves to CE mark your product this may involve rigorous testing and forced failure electrically and mechanically to test the limitations of your product.
 
Thanks for your valuable input. I'm on a learning curve so youtube vids and Q & A on here are just the first part of the curve. I'm not asking forum members to design the harness on here. At this stage forum members will know a lot more about what's involved in getting this done. I'm just trying to get a little bit further along.

So thanks for giving me some excellent information which makes me a little bit wiser. So if I have understood you correctly I need to find a person/company to design it. That is what I was asking for in my first post. Where do I look for such a person/company and what qualifications must they have?

Then I have to get a CE mark. It looks like that is the next area I need to research. Here is a good page to start with:
CE Marking: CE mark approval, CE testing, CE mark requirements, how achieve them all for my product? - http://www.ce-marking.org/how-obtain.html
From a cursory reading (I will do a lot more research when I have time) there is something called minimal risk:
"
Options for products with minimal risk include self certification where the manufacturer prepares a Declaration of Conformity and affixes the CE Marking to their own product. "

So I need to find out what "minimal risk" means. The sunbed will be a very simple thing with only 10 lamps and I'm told that it should not draw a lot of amps. So maybe I fall under that category. I guess I would need to get someone to prepare the "Declaration of Conformity" for me.

So thanks for your input. I'm a little bit wiser and know a bit more about where to research. If anyone has more suggestions I would very much appreciate your input.
 
I'm going to manufacture it myself by subcontracting out all the fabrication and I will just screw the thing together.

Just to add to the above, seeing that you are "manufacturing" these sunbeds, you will also have to CE mark your product as well as making sure all products you are purchasing that are imported are CE marked and safe.
"The importer is always responsible for ensuring product certification and consumer safety compliance when bringing in products. It would simply be too hard for government authorities to enforce compliance in a foreign country – China included. This puts a lot of weight on the importers shoulders."
You will have lots of fun getting all the correct paperwork for this.
 
The sunbed will be a very simple thing with only 10 lamps and I'm told that it should not draw a lot of amps. So maybe I fall under that category.

Surrounding a person with 10 lamps and the associated wiring and control gear at mains voltage doesn’t sound like minimal risk to me.
Possible risks from a fault are electric shock or burns from overheated components.
 
I’m interested to know your background in that your entrepreneurial side has no idea about the product you want to manufacture yet has been around for years!
Why not just import complete units to sell on as a business, they will have been manufactured to a standard that you will be able to sell on.
All the time saved you can use working on your tan.
Not being rude but it sounds like a round object to be placed on an axel is being thought about.
 
I’m interested to know your background in that your entrepreneurial side has no idea about the product you want to manufacture yet has been around for years!
Why not just import complete units to sell on as a business, they will have been manufactured to a standard that you will be able to sell on.
All the time saved you can use working on your tan.
Not being rude but it sounds like a round object to be placed on an axel is being thought about.

I think the OP is hoping to make lots of money by manufacturing the sunbeds himself... Unfortunately for him, he hasn't considered the cost of getting the sunbeds compliant with all the standards... and as @darkwood has already said in his post above "this is likely to blow your budget out of the water and is the reason why many good ideas and products never get to market stage."
 
could always get Rodney Trotter to test the sunbeds.
 
@Christopher Parkingson
'Options for products with minimal risk include self certification where the manufacturer prepares a Declaration of Conformity and affixes the CE Marking to their own product.'

I think your been a little naive here, a sunbed is definitely not a product that falls in minimal risk, there are tens of thousands of cases of injuries, burns and even death caused by sunbeds, this is not something you can push through on a minimal risk level.
Also if you want my opinion I think you are flogging a dead horse here, predictions are for better summers, also sunbeds are a bit of a trend/fashion, many are now turning to alternatives with lower risks to get a tan.
You also have a uphill struggle as local regulation and national regulations continue to tighten there grip on this industry, I seriously hope you are not ploughing your life earnings into this as you are making a big gamble on an industry that has seen the tide turn and is in decline, the UK market has been falling since 2013 and the likes of the USA has also seen similar declines, the sunbed trend is no longer as we see shelves flooded with affordable, non streak tanning products so I would think very carefully about continuing and trying to take on the big industries in a fastly declining market.

Good luck either way.
 
mmmm..... Lots of negativity on here. Just wondering if it's a standard trait of electricians.;)

Rest assured that the sunbeds will be safe. Regardless of regulations which I will make sure I comply with of course. I may not have much of a clue now but I guarantee that by the time I'm finished I will be an absolute expert on the subject.
 
Just found someone in the industry to design and make the wiring harness for me. No doubt they will tell me everything I need to know about getting compliant. I learned a bit more on here and got a little further along. So thanks to all for our input (even the negative stuff).
 
I personally am not trying to be negative but I am someone who design and builds control systems and I get a very strong impression you don't realise the massive hurdles needed and the large injection of capital just to get a product like this to a market that is saturated and declining, I would seriously look into sunbed use and its decline over the past several years and see if there is a market out there for you.

I am not trying to get you to throw the towel in, just trying to ensure that you understand the market you are entering, If I make you reconsider and save you tens of thousands then great but I would be equally happy if you did prove me wrong so all the best, as you can gather though, we do give you honest opinions and advice even if it is does seem negative, we collectively have have had many years of experience between us and we tend to see the same issues and hurdles that we expect you will encounter, we have over the yrs seen it and heard it many times so only passing on our collective knowledge here.
 
Red tape might be a lot more difficult to overcome than I thought. I get it. Thanks for the warnings. I'm coming at this from an angle that makes complete sense to myself but which I am keeping confidential for the moment. As someone mentioned I have a lot of entrepeneurial experience but more important an entrepeneurial mindset. So a load of bureaucrats making life difficult for me and trying to kill off the project because I'm not a big business will only make me more determined. Key things you need to be an entrepeneur IMO. 1. Have a worthwhile goal which will genuinely make a contribution. 2. Find a way round any obstacles. (And there IS always a way). 2. Keep focused on the goal and never give up.

Cheers Chris
 
If you told a group of expert mountain climbers you were going to climb the North face of the Eiger with slippers on and spoons instead of ice axes, then their responses may make them seem overly negative from the viewpoint of the inexperienced. ;)
 
mmmm..... Lots of negativity on here. Just wondering if it's a standard trait of electricians.;)

All depends on your perspective mate. I usually get the statement of "negative attitude" from people who think they have a great idea but don't fully know all the regs and safety implications regarding their idea.....
Hopefully you will prove me wrong. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
 
Remember what happened to Trevor Baylis, he spent decades getting his wind up radio to market and the company he went into business with to manufacture it tweaked the design and took most of the intellectual rights due to a quirk of the patenting laws.. he was broke when we realised a life long ambition to get it to market....
The lesson here is never trust anyone in the business world, if the product has potential then they will do everything to maximise what they get out of it even if it means sacrificing the very hand that fed them in the first place.
 

Reply to Electrics for a sunbed in the Commercial Electrical Advice area at ElectriciansForums.net

OFFICIAL SPONSORS

Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Electrician Courses Green Electrical Goods PCB Way Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Pushfit Wire Connectors Electric Underfloor Heating Electrician Courses
These Official Forum Sponsors May Provide Discounts to Regular Forum Members - If you would like to sponsor us then CLICK HERE and post a thread with who you are, and we'll send you some stats etc
This website was designed, optimised and is hosted by Untold Media. Operating under the name Untold Media since 2001.
Back
Top
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock