Tag: machinery

CSA Z432 Safeguarding of Machinery – 3rd Edition

If you build machinery for the Canadian mar­ket, or if you modi­fy equip­ment in Canadian work­places, you will be famil­i­ar with CSA Z432, Safeguarding of Machinery. This stand­ard has been around since 1992, with the last major revi­sion pub­lished in 2004. CSA has recon­vened the Technical Committee respons­ible for this import­ant stand­ard to revise the doc­u­ment to reflect the cur­rent prac­tices in the machinery mar­ket, and to bring in new ideas that are devel­op­ing inter­na­tion­ally that affect what Canadian machine build­ers are doing.

If you have interest in this stand­ard and would like to have your thoughts and con­cerns com­mu­nic­ated to the Technical Committee, please feel free to con­tact me with your sug­ges­tions. Work starts on 28-​Jan-​14. Your input is wel­comed!

EC Machinery Working Group meets

From our friends at MachineBuilding​.net.

It is now more than a year since the new Machinery Directive (2006/​42/​EC) came into force, but the situ­ation is still fairly flu­id in some respects. The EC Machinery Working Group meets reg­u­larly to dis­cuss mat­ters relat­ing to the Directive and cor­res­pond­ing stand­ards; the last meet­ing took place on 21/​22 December. According to the Stakeholder Report pub­lished in the UK by BIS (the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills), a num­ber of issues were dis­cussed, which demon­strates that the Machinery Directive is not as ‘black and white’ as might be expec­ted.

For example, EN 12635 (Industrial, com­mer­cial and gar­age doors and gates – Installation and use) is cur­rently har­mon­ised to the Machinery Directive, but the UK has raised a form­al objec­tion against this stand­ard, as it would appear that there is scope for improve­ment. Other top­ics under dis­cus­sion ranged from vari­able reach trucks, tail lifts and load­er cranes, to stave split­ters, dynamo­met­ers and ‘grey’ imports of machinery.

If you would like more inform­a­tion, cop­ies of the cur­rent and pre­vi­ous Stakeholder Reports are avail­able in PDF format from the UK Department of Business Information & Skills (BIS) web site.

Machinery Directive stake­hold­er report: February 2011 (PDF, 81 Kb)

Machinery Directive Working Group held on 1 – 2 June 2010, Brussels (PDF, 56 Kb)

Retained fastenings for fixed guards

If you are build­ing machinery that will be CE marked or is sub­ject to the EU Machinery Directive, you need to read this art­icle at MachineBuilding​.net

This art­icle reviews some of the retained fasten­ings that are avail­able for use on fixed machine guards, as required by the new Machinery Directive 2006/​42/​EC and the guard­ing stand­ard EN 953:1997+A1:2009.

One of the changes in the new Machinery Directive is that the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (1.4.2.1, fixed guards), states: “fix­ing sys­tems must remain attached to the guards or machinery when the guards are removed.” This new require­ment has also been added to the amended EN 953.

Various types of retained fasten­ing – such as cap­tive screws and quarter-​turn fasten­ers – are avail­able, but machine build­ers need to spe­cify these with care if they are to find the optim­um com­bin­a­tion of pur­chase cost, install­a­tion cost and ease of use. Also bear in mind the require­ment that “fixed guards must be fixed by sys­tems that can be opened or removed only with tools.” What fol­lows is a sum­mary of some of the products and sup­pli­ers oper­at­ing in this field.