If you are a laser user, or a machine designer who integrates lasers into machinery, you should read this article from Photonics that gives a good overview of global laser safety standards.
A colleague of mine pointed me to this interesting article by Donald Christiansen that was published in the August edition of IEEE USA's Today's Engineer magazine.
As engineers designing equipment, we normally conduct some form of risk assessment. Although many companies are still using informal and undocumented methods, methodical, documented risk assessments are becoming the norm in industry.
Since understanding the risk related to our designs is fundamental to preventing those risks from occurring, why do we continue to see failures with catastrophic results occur, and why do people in the business seem to have the information necessary to recognize a problem, and then subsequently fail to do what is needed to prevent future occurrences?
Check out Christansen's article to get an idea...
- #Identifying hazards is the first step in the risk assessment process, but to do this effectively the hazards must be understood. Engineered nanoparticles, like carbon nanotubes, are beginning to show up in a wide variety of products. The problem is that their hazards are not well understood.
Check out this article from IHSN magazine on this subject
- #In this excellent article from Rockwell Automation's The Journal, Mike Miller and Wayne Solberg explain how EN ISO 13849-1 and EN IEC 62061 mesh for machine builders.
Well worth the read in my opinion!
The Journal: Safety is Good Business - Marshall & Solberg
- #Are you an Apple fan? An iPhone fan? Here's an article on an independent test on the iPhone 4 by AntennaSys that may interest you...
http://www.AntennaSys.com
You may also be interested in this IEEE podcast with one of the principles at AntennaSys, Spencer Webb.
- #Did you know that interlocked gates require stopping performance testing?
Machinery needs to be able to stop in the time it takes a person to open the guard and reach the hazard. If the distance from the guard opening to the hazard is short enough that a person can reach the danger point before the hazard can be controlled, the guard is useless. The resulting situation may be worse than not having a guard because it's presence leads to a false sense of security in users.
Test the stopping time of guarded hazards and make sure that guards are far enough away from the danger zone to be effective. For more on stopping performance requirements, see CSA Z434, EN 999 (soon to be replaced by EN 13855:2010), and in the USA, 29 CFR 1910.217(h)(9)(v).
Download ISO Standards
Download IEC standards, International Electrotechnical Commission standards.
Download BSI Standards (British Standards Institution)
Download ANSI standards
Need help with stopping performance testing. Contact us!
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