International CE Machines Now Shipping
February 1, 2020
Background
Up until now we have only shipped WAZERs to the United States and Canada, because the machine only works with the North American electrical standard of 110V / 60Hz. Despite the massive request from manufacturers and distributors around the world asking to ship them a WAZER, we stayed focused on stabilizing the product and company within our domestic market. Taking on all the additional complexities of international distribution, servicing, and unknowns associated with new products was not something we could afford to get wrong! At the end of the day we had our hands full just keeping up with our domestic operation, customers, product, logistics and tech support.
Apologies to all those who have had to wait longer than expected. By holding off and getting through all our growing pains we can now become an international company with much more confidence, ultimately bringing less trouble to our international customers.
By the end of 2018 our domestic machine had been in production for over a year and was being manufactured reliably. In 2019 we needed new product development initiatives for our engineers to sink their teeth into, and we decided to pursue the WAZER international 220V / 50Hz machine development. As a result, at the onset of 2019 we began accepting international pre-orders and began the redesign and certification processes to meet CE safety certification standards. This would allow us to ship WAZERs around the world!
International CE Certified WAZER Machines
The goals of this product development activity were twofold: to redesign the current machine to function under the new operating voltage and frequency and to comply with CE safety standards for the entire product. Some of the new safety design features that were implemented include:
A big, red “Emergency-Stop” button for easier access and quicker response to shutting the machine down
Multi-level door switch interlock redundancy to ensure that safety hazards are immediately cut off if the door is ever opened during operation. This includes redundancies in: sensors, control electronics hardware and safety software logic
CE certification on the WAZER Main Unit and Pump Box to numerous standards that comprise of thousands of safety and use-specific design criteria. The relevant standards are: General Safety of Machinery (EN 60204-1), Safety of Machinery (EN/ISO 12100-2010), High Pressure Waterjet Machines (EN 1829-1/-2), and Electric motor-operated Tools-safety (IEC 62841-1)
A noise level of 87db. WAZER’s noise level is comparable to other tools such as drill presses and bandsaws. And 87db is below OSHA’s 8 hour per day limit!
With numerous potential plug configurations for different regions, we now match each machine to a particular customer’s needs based on their local plug. Additionally, each machine is configured with its language-specific warning labels, user manual, and setup labels. We went from having around 50 labels to a whopping 600+ labels, and that number keeps growing. The labels occupy an entire wall at our final inspection and labeling station. We also expanded our line of user manuals: from just one English-language user manual to an assortment of manuals in over 12 languages.
Overall the new product has very few visible differences, but under the skin over 45 parts were added or modified. This was the result of hundreds of hours of design, testing, manufacturing and sourcing by the engineers at WAZER in collaboration with expert certification personnel from UL and CE.
The Process Details
As with any proper product development cycle, the functional design and design-for-manufacturing (DFM) is only a small part of the work. (To be honest, that’s the only fun part!) After that, comes the necessary “overhead” of product development which includes formal verification, validation, and documentation. This wasn’t new to us at WAZER. If you followed us closely from our Kickstarter crowdfunding days, you know we have already systemized our product development and documentation processes. However, stepping into the formal third-party certification space required us to redesign some of our internal design control systems and documentation. Additionally, there were the dark days when we stayed in the deep depths of UL laboratory basements, getting formal testing done using their fancy equipment. All these endeavors were done to assure that the final product met the proper safety certification standards.
With hundreds of pages of testing documentation, a multitude of new SKUs to manage, and a revamped production line to produce domestic 110V and international 220V machines, we are now officially shipping International WAZERs and fulfilling our pre-orders from last year! To all our patient international customers: we hope the wait was worth it! Distributors, you will need to wait a little longer for your turn - we aren’t ready for you yet. :)
