- Emergency Stop – What’s so confusing about that?
- Checking Emergency Stop Systems
- Guarding Emergency Stop Devices
- Emergency Stop Categories
- Busting Emergency Stop Myths
- Using E‑Stops in Lockout Procedures
- Reader Question: Multiple E‑Stops and Resets
- Updates to Popular Articles
- New contact block design for Emergency Stop devices from Siemens
- Emergency stop devices: the risks of installer liability
- Testing Emergency Stop Systems
- STO)”>Safe Drive Control including Safe Torque Off (STO)
- Emergency Stop Failures
- Emergency Stop Pull-Cords
- Can Emergency Stop be used as an “on/off” control?
- More E‑Stop Questions
I am always looking for interesting examples of machinery safety problems to share on MS101. Recently I was scrolling Reddit/r/OSHA and found these three real-world examples.
Broken Emergency Stop Buttons
The first and most obvious kinds of failures are those resulting from either wear out or damage to emergency stop devices like e‑stop buttons or pull cords. Here’s a great example:
The operator device in this picture has two problems:
1) the button operator has failed and
2) the e‑stop is incorrectly marked.
The correct marking would be a yellow background in place of the red/silver legend plate, like the example below. The yellow background could have the words “emergency stop” on it, but this is not necessary as the colour combination is enough.

There is an ISO/IEC symbol for an emergency stop that could also be used [1].

There are contact blocks made to detect this kind of failure, like Allen Bradley’s self-monitoring contact block, 800TC-XD4S, or the similar Siemens product,3SB34. Most controls component manufacturers will be likely to have similar components.
Here’s another example from a machine inspection I did a while ago. Note the wire “keeper” that prevents the button from getting lost!
Installation Failures
Here is an example of poor planning when installing new barrier guards. The emergency stop button is now out of reach. The original poster does not indicate a reason why the emergency stop for the machine he was operating was mounted on a different machine.
sure hope i never need to hit that emergency stop button. its for the machine on my side of the new fence. from OSHA
No Emergency Stop at all
Finally, and possibly the worst example of all. Here is an improvised emergency stop using a set of wire cutters. No further comment required.
If you have any examples you would like to share, feel free to add them in comments below. References to particular employers or manufacturers will be deleted before posts are approved.
References
[1] “IEC 60417 – 5638, Emergency Stop”, Iso.org, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iec:grs:60417:5638. [Accessed: 27- Jun- 2017].