Burn baby burn, part 2 of CE testing, the flammability tests (EN71-2)

Good morning all you lovely readers,

I hope I find you well on this rather grey day here in Birmingham, UK. I only add that as it is the middle of August and as such supposedly the middle of summer here, the poor school kids haven't had it too good yet.

Anyway, if you missed part one of this series of blog posts: Mechanical and physical properties (EN71-1) you can find it here. 
https://beeskneesartdolls.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/ce-testing-stage-1-what-everybody-who.html


But today is all about the burn and I don't mean a Jane Fonda exercise routine. (Anyone remember? I hated the 'burn'), I'm off on a tangent again. Ok  the burn.

I have found it hard to find a definition for this part on-line but this from https://blog.asiaqualityfocus.com/toys-standards-and-the-en-71-regulation-part-1-2-3/ seems to sum it up pretty well:

Most materials used by manufacturers to produce toys will burn if exposed to an appropriate ignition source. To reduce the risks of burn injuries associated with children being in contact with certain toys, different testing methods have been defined to identify a limited rate of spread of flame or maximum ‘after flame time’ to give time to the child to drop the toy or take distance from it before serious injury occurs.

So today I'm basically showing the tests for how fast the toy burns and if a child is able to get away from the toy in time if it should catch light. This should be a burn rate of 30mm per second or less. Conformance describe this as 'when the spread of the flame reaches the top of the fabric'

The first test I did I didn't video very well at all, and after a few burnings I realised it was best to have a clock with a second hand in view of the video too so I could work out the burn rate better, but because I don't want to keep burning things I have spent time making, you will just have to bear with me.

As I am making rag dolls with removable clothes these all need to be taken into account. The doll as a whole needs testing and then the individual items of clothing need testing, so to keep it a little bit more simple for myself to begin with, I have decided they should just have a dress and a pair of bloomers (well they need knickers, don't they? )

I also spent quite a bit of time burning strips of fabric to see which burn faster, which determined my choice of dress fabric. This fabric was not the best choice, but I didn't know that when I sewed it. Unsurprisingly the dresses burn much faster than the stuffed doll, which on it's own just self extinguished in a very satisfying manner. In this test the dress didn't catch fire and the doll's leg went out.

Please don't watch the video if you don't want to see the demise of this poor little girl (never named cause I thought it would help), but I have to own up I felt terrible after this and it almost put me off trying  to complete this CE malarkey at all.

But she was lit at 00.13
and was not covered in flames until around 00.31.
When you know she was 22cm tall, we can work out that, using 3cm a second, the maximum time for the flames to reach burned at would be 7.3333333 seconds after the start of burning so that is 20.3333333 seconds into filming which is this point:

so although she is no longer with us, she has 'happily' shown that Mini Bees pass the EN71-2 burn test.

But what about their clothes well as there was nothing left of that dress and pair of bloomers, off I went to make a new ones. The dress is slightly over 150mm, but the bloomers aren't, and anything under needs to follow the following guidelines:

..you should test each component separately. The test for individual components is referred to as a "surface flash" test - you simply need to check that when you apply a flame to the components, it extinguishes itself or does not spread rapidly




The material I intend to use for their bloomers is this lovely Liberty print and at a flash test passed ok. This piece is 15cm high and this is 5 seconds into burn which is a pass. Sadly it folded so you can't really see.

And here is the 5.33 second point of the dress burn (a 16cm dress so easily within the burn rate).

And just when you think you're done, as I mentioned last week, I now need to wash doll, and clothes and test again.

All of this seems like a lot of work and a lot of loss of work, but now it is done I can go ahead and make dolls using the same fabric and procedures knowing they are
       1. safe for all children
       2. completely legal
and 3. of a standard I am happy to sell and know wont fall apart when played with, a big thumbs up.

I'd like to point out that I was carrying out these tests in our very useful utility area, over a large Belfast sink, so any burning material fell into water and was extinguished, please if you are doing these tests yourself, don't get caught out and think it wont take, be careful and definitely don't hold the toy when testing.

Next week part 3 of testing, ie EN71-3, and then tiding it all up and the technical files, bet you can't wait.

Hugs and Kisses
Ally

CE testing stage 1: what everybody who makes toys should know, and do.

Good morning all and welcome.

Hello especially to new readers, hope you find this an interesting and informative blog. (I assume you're here because I'm going to talk about CE testing and how I make my dolls so they will pass)

Firstly what is CE? good question. This is what www.ce-marking.org say:

Holiday Snapshots

Hello all my lovely readers,

well I am typing this blog post one handed due to a slightly extreme accident that happened on holiday, resulting in a hospital stay and a rather painful operation and a piece of large metal being inserted into my left wrist to hold all the little bones together.

Holiday Mode - yay

Good morning lovely people

Can I firstly say that something strange happened during writing last week's blog post and somehow I managed to publish way before I had finished. I un-published it but not before 6 people had seen it, presumably some of you lovely folks that have an automatic link. So as blogger probably wont then have told said lovely folks that the finished version was published, may I advise, if last week you got a very strange unfinished blog, then please go to the bottom of this blog post and there you will find it complete. Sorry for any inconvenience and thanks. Ally