Category: Functional Safety

Func­tion­al safety relates to the over­all safety provided by a sys­tem, and not just to one ele­ment, sub-sys­tem or cir­cuit. The field of func­tion­al safety includes the design of con­trol soft­ware, user inter­faces, safety related parts of the con­trol sys­tem, phys­ic­al and pres­ence sens­ing safe­guard­ing devices.

Complementary Protective Measures

Can Emergency Stop be used as an “on/off” control?

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Emergency Stop Button
This entry is part 16 of 16 in the series Emer­gency Stop

Every couple of months I get an email ask­ing me if there is any reas­on why e-stop func­tions can’t be used as the primary power con­trol (on/off but­ton) for machinery. Fol­low­ing a recent exchange, I thought I would share the reas­ons for why this is such a bad idea. The short answer The short answer is an unequi­voc­al NO. Don’t […]

Complementary Protective Measures

Introduction to Functional Safety Seminars

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Man training a group of people, pointing to Functional Safety topics on the whiteboard

If you are inter­ested in func­tion­al safety, and I know many read­ers are based on the stat­ist­ics I see for my oth­er func­tion­al safety-related posts, I think you will be inter­ested in this. I am col­lab­or­at­ing with the IEEE Product Safety Engin­eer­ing Society’s Vir­tu­al Chapter to provide a series of three 35 minute sem­inars dis­cuss­ing the fun­da­ment­als of func­tion­al safety. The […]

Control Functions

Trapped Key Interlocking

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This is a trapped key interlock on the door of an electrical switchgear cabinet. To open the door the key must be inserted and turned to withdraw a bolt that holds the door closed. With the bolt withdrawn, the key is held in the lock. The upstream switching device is held open by another interlock using the same key; since the key can only be in one of the two locks, it prevents accidentally closing the upstream switch while the cabinet is open for maintenance. The interlock is attached to the door with one-way screws to discourage casual removal of the lock, which would defeat the system.
This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series Guards and Guard­ing

Many machine design­ers think of inter­locks as exclus­ively elec­tric­al devices; a switch is attached to a mov­able mech­an­ic­al guard, and the switch is con­nec­ted to the con­trol sys­tem. Trapped Key Inter­lock­ing is a way to inter­lock guards that is equally effect­ive, and often more appro­pri­ate in severe envir­on­ment­al con­di­tions. Copy­right secured by Digi­prove © 2018Acknow­ledge­ments: As cited.Some Rights ReservedOri­gin­al con­tent here is pub­lished under […]