Quote Originally Posted by Blurock View Post
The SABS mark has become a joke as the SABS has no test facilities or capable people to do the tests.
The SAPPMA (South African pipe manufacturers) has been at logger heads with SABS for years as they do not have the capability to certify products as is required by municipalities.

As a result, a new, independent body was formed to certify manufacturing according to SANS (South African National Standards). South African Technical Auditing Services (SATAS) is accredited by South African National Accreditation Systems (SANAS) to certify manufacturers, producing products within the scope of their accreditation, to the requirements of ISO 17065. The scope of accreditation is covered on the Accreditation Certificate. SATAS will eventually replace the SABS mark.

Unfortunately, most suppliers and wholesalers still import and sell uncertified products from China and elsewhere with no concern to quality. If you pay for crap, you will receive crap and a bad name for product failure.
This is my gripe ... you pay shyte you get shyte ... but heres the thing the price has increased from 50 cents to R1.90 and yet the standard has fallen to what I would qualify as rejects.

I was at the wholesaler today sitting in the store sorting out my order ... I dont trust the packer ... they just throw any crap into the packet ... I sorted enough to last me 6 months.

Apparently the parts which I would classify as rejects are coming from Matelec ... it seems they have a serious quality control issue.

Besides the plastic distortion ... the blue and red insert in the PVC glands are so hard that you cant even compress it onto the cable.

Today I see there is a new cable supplier ... and just as I expected ... so the quality of the cable is as bad as I expected (even with its SABS stamp of approval).

SO what is the problem ... simple when time is money and the job should be a quick simple snip and strip ... but when you you on site and have to fight with a silly thing like trying to pull the earth wire from the twin+E ... and you have 130 cables to terminate into a DB ... it start wasting money ... considering an hourly rate of R850 per hour during the week and R1600 per hour (double time) on the weekend and I normally leave the terminations for the weekend (nice easy job for the weekend) it gets f%^& expensive to sit and strip cheap crap SABS cable.