Machinery Safety 101
26 June, 2017

ISO 13849 – 1 Analysis — Part 8: Fault Exclusion

by Doug Nix
in Canada, CE Mark, Control Functions, Control Reliability, Emergency Stop, EU Robotics, Functional Safety, How to, Interlocks, International Robotics, ISO 13849, North American Robotics, Robotics, Standards /
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This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series How to do a 13849 – 1 ana­lys­is

Post updated 2019-07-24. Ed. Fault Con­sid­er­a­tion & Fault Exclu­sion ISO 13849 – 1, Chapter 7 [1, 7] dis­cusses the need for fault con­sid­er­a­tion and fault exclu­sion. Fault con­sid­er­a­tion is the pro­cess of examin­ing the…

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1 June, 2012

Interlocking Devices: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

by Doug Nix
in Canada, CE Mark, Components, Control Functions, Control Reliability, EU European Union, EU Robotics, Guards and Guarding, Hierarchy of Controls, Interlocks, Interlocks, International, International Robotics, ISO 13849, North American Robotics, Ontario, Robotics, USA /
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This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Guards and Guard­ing

Note: A short­er ver­sion of this art­icle was pub­lished in the May-2012 edi­tion of  Man­u­fac­tur­ing Auto­ma­tion Magazine. When design­ing safe­guard­ing sys­tems for machines, one of the basic build­ing blocks is the…

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6 August, 2010

Five things most machine builders do incorrectly

by Doug Nix
in Canada, CE Mark, Control Reliability, EU Robotics, Functional Safety, Guards and Guarding, Interlocks, International Robotics, North American Robotics, Robotics, Top 5 Lists /
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Five things that most machine build­ers fail to do. With a Sixth Bonus fail­ure!

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11 December, 2009

Do you use industrial robots? ANSI adopts ISO 10218 – 1 and changes the game

by Doug Nix
in Control Reliability, International Robotics, North American Robotics, Robotics /
2 Comments

If you are an indus­tri­al robot user in North Amer­ica (Canada and the USA primar­ily), you know ANSI/RIA R15.06 and CSA Z434. Did you know that ANSI has adop­ted the ISO robot safety stand­ard? Learn more here…

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6 March, 2009

Emergency Stop – What’s so confusing about that?

by Doug Nix
in Canada, CE Mark, Complementary Protective Measures, Control Functions, Control Reliability, Emergency Stop, EU European Union, EU Robotics, International Robotics, North American Robotics, Ontario, Robotics, USA /
38 Comments
Emergency Stop on machine console
This entry is part 1 of 16 in the series Emer­gency Stop

I get a lot of calls and emails ask­ing about emer­gency stops. This is one of those decept­ively simple con­cepts that has man­aged to get very com­plic­ated over time. Not every machine needs or can bene­fit from an emer­gency stop. In some cases, it may lead to an unreas­on­able expect­a­tion of safety from the user, which can lead to injury if they don’t under­stand the haz­ards involved. Some product-spe­cif­ic stand­ards

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