Electrical Equipment Spec Sheets: IEC 60529 (IP) and ATEX 2014/34/EU Aware

A protection rating is a code, and a code does not survive paraphrase. IP65, IP67 and IP68 are standardized designations per IEC 60529 with specific meanings for dust and water ingress. Stored as “waterproof” or “dust-resistant”, the row is inaccurate and, on a document a surveillance authority may read, legally awkward. The code belongs in the record exactly as printed, with the operating temperature range that gives it meaning beside it.

Four currents on one sheet, and they are not interchangeable. Rated current, nominal current, inrush current and leakage current are four different safety specifications. A catalog column called “current” that took whichever one appeared first has published a number nobody tested. The same trap sits under rated against nominal voltage, and under the insulation figures: creepage and clearance are separate distances under EN IEC 60664-1, and they are separate fields.

The substance data is scattered across documents nobody reads together. A RoHS declaration lives in one PDF, the per-substance concentrations in a materials annex, the REACH statement in a third. When a customer asks whether lead in the solder is under the limit, somebody opens all three and reads carefully. A catalog row that says only “RoHS compliant” cannot answer.

The nameplate and the documentation drift apart. A protection class marked on the product is a fact; the same class written in a datasheet, a declaration of conformity and a test report is three more chances to disagree. Whoever notices is a safety inspector or a customer, and by then the sheet has already shipped.

Domain detection identifies the electrical vertical automatically. Whether the document covers a power supply, a drive, a sensor, a relay, a connector or switchgear, the system detects the domain and uses it for two things: which compliance rule sets can apply to the document, and which vocabulary a property is named in when the record is translated.

Each property it finds, with its unit, its confidence and its source line where the text can be located. A voltage range, current rating, IP code, temperature specification or certification reference comes out as a structured field carrying the unit it was printed in, a confidence score and, wherever the text can be located, a link to the line on the page. Click a linked value and the source PDF opens on that line, which is how a customer question about a substance limit gets answered from the document rather than from memory.

Standard codes are captured as identifiers, attached to their property. IEC, EN, UL and CSA references, directive numbers and test method citations are recognized as identifiers and kept exactly as printed, beside the value they qualify, in every export.

An audit checks what was captured against the source. A second pass compares the structured record with the original and names what it finds: a voltage rating in the header that the specification table contradicts, a current specification the sheet states that the extraction did not capture, a temperature range that disagrees between sections. Wherever the sentence that raised a finding can be quoted, the finding links straight to it.

Electrical is one of the domains where the most rule sets apply without needing to be invoked. RoHS, ingress protection and CE marking are checked on every document here, alongside the REACH and identification checks that run on everything.

RoHS, all ten restricted substances. Lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBB, PBDE and the four phthalates added by (EU) 2015/863, each against its own limit: 0.1 % by weight, and 0.01 % for cadmium. A blanket “RoHS compliant” declaration covers the per-substance checks when the document gives no figures, which is how most datasheets are written. What it does not do is override a number: if the sheet declares a concentration over the limit anywhere, that fails whatever the declaration says elsewhere, because the limits apply per homogeneous material and a compliant solder does not excuse a brass part. A value printed as a range is read at the end that can fail, so “0.05 to 0.4 %” of lead is a failure and not a pass.

Ingress protection, and the temperature that makes it mean something. The IP code per IEC 60529 is checked as a required declaration, and the operating temperature range alongside it as a recommendation, because an enclosure rating without the conditions it was rated under is half a specification.

A denial is read as a denial. A document that states a product is not RoHS compliant, or that a variant does not carry CE marking, is scored as the denial it is. That sounds obvious and is not: a checker that asks only whether a token appears will read “Not compliant. Contains lead above 0.1 % by weight” as a pass, because every word it looks for is present.

ATEX and machinery only when the document invokes them. An Ex marking, an equipment group and category marking such as II 2G, or a citation of 2014/34/EU or IECEx brings in the ATEX rule set; a citation of 2006/42/EC or (EU) 2023/1230, or of EN ISO 12100, EN ISO 13849, EN 62061 or EN ISO 10218, brings in the machinery regime. A sensor that claims neither is reported as not applicable rather than failed. All of it is a documentation readiness check: what your sheet does not say, not whether the product conforms.

Placing an electrical product on the EU market requires a declaration of conformity stating which directives it meets: for most products at least the Low Voltage Directive (2014/35/EU) and the EMC Directive (2014/30/EU), often RoHS (2011/65/EU) alongside them, and the Radio Equipment Directive for radio products. Each directive references specific harmonised standards, and the declaration must be available in the language of the Member State where the product is placed on the market. The technical file behind it, the EMC and safety test reports, may be requested too.

That is several documents describing one product, and they are read into the same record structure so they can be held against each other rather than trusted one at a time:

The record is the deliverable. Everything below is a view of it.

Export to Excel, JSON or JSON-LD. Voltage ranges, current ratings, IP codes, temperature specifications and certification references come out as structured data for your PIM, ERP or product configurator. Akeneo sync is built in and previews the field mapping against your own attributes before anything is written.

Compare products and suppliers. Put several sheets side by side and values are compared with their units normalized, so a rating in kW and one in W are read as the same power, and a specification one supplier declares and another omits is flagged as a gap.

Battery passport readiness. The EU Battery Regulation mandates digital passports from February 2027. SpecMake scores a battery document against the DPP field catalog for that category, names the fields that are missing, and exports JSON-LD mapped to schema.org vocabulary, ready to map into the passport platform you choose.

A catalog that keeps pace. The February 2027 deadline is fixed, but the rules behind it keep moving: RoHS exemption reviews, REACH candidate-list updates, DPP delegated acts. The rule sets are versioned and checked monthly against official EU sources, and when we update one, every product in your catalog is re-scored against the new version and the products that changed status are named. Plans cover your full catalog, with all 14 languages included.

Translation runs on the structured record rather than on the PDF. Values, IP codes, directive numbers and test method citations are carried across unchanged, and only the descriptive text is rendered in the target language.

EMC documentation is where that matters most. A single test report references several sub-standards from the IEC 61000 family, each with its own setup, limits and criteria, and the vocabulary is exact: “Einstrahlfestigkeit” is radiated immunity, not radiation resistance; “leitungsgebundene Störaussendung” is conducted emissions, not line-bound interference emission; and “Burst” in an EMC context means electrical fast transients per IEC 61000-4-4. Anyone who runs EMC tests spots the literal version immediately.