7/27/2017 Fortify your machines' defenses

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Fortify your machines' defenses

Sheila Kennedy says combine physical barriers and advanced technologies to keep workers safe.
By Sheila Kennedy, CMRP
Jul 21, 2017

Providing a safe and healthful workplace is every employer’s responsibility. The U.S. Occupational Safety and
Health Administration (OSHA) advises: “(A)ny machine part, function, or process which may cause injury must be
safeguarded. When the operation of a machine or accidental contact with it can injure the operator or others in the
vicinity, the hazards must be either controlled or eliminated.”

Technology Toolbox

This article is part of our monthly

Technology Toolbox column. Read
more from Sheila Kennedy.

Protective barriers, sensing safety controls, and advanced drives are among the many machine safeguarding tools
helping protect workers today.

Physical barriers

Automatic machine safety doors prevent hazardous operations from interfering with other processes and nearby
people. The new Gortite VF (vertical fabric) door from Dynatect provides dynamic protection for applications prone
to welding splatter, smoke, arc flash, and other common hazards. It can include a UV-resistant window to enable
visibility of the protected process.

“The barrier created by the VF door reduces the floor space required by eliminating the extra buffer needed for light
curtains to create a safety zone,” says Steve Piacsek, R&D engineering manager at Dynatect. “Unlike light curtains,
which can’t contain process hazards, high-speed roll-up doors isolate common workplace debris.”

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For inspections of energized electrical equipment, electrical maintenance safety devices (EMSDs) such as the
infrared windows or ultrasound ports from IRISS can be affixed to a cabinet surface to protect against arc flash and
electrocution hazards. Combining EMSDs with critical asset surveillance technologies (CAST), including IR cameras
or ultrasonic probes, allows real-time electrical condition monitoring readings to be taken safely from outside the
closed cabinet.

This approach “can further enhance an equipment reliability program by ensuring that wrench-turn-type
maintenance is only performed when truly warranted,” says Rudy Wodrich, VP of technical services at IRISS.
Infrared windows from IRISS utilize a patented reinforced polymer optic that is rugged, durable, and optically stable
and that carries an unconditional lifetime warranty.

Machine stop and restart controls

OSHA’s online Machine Safeguarding

manual provides a comprehensive
discussion of methods of worker
protection from machine hazards.

Other useful tools include:

A Machine Guarding Checklist to help
identify safeguarding needs in the
workplace

List of Worker Rights and

Responsibilities

Accidental restarts often occur because machine operators assume their machinery has anti-restart protection when
it does not. The Sensing-Saf-Start from Rockford Systems is designed to protect against automatic or unintentional
restarts when a power interruption occurs. “These types of accidents are some of the most common on the plant
floor, resulting in horrible injuries, such as crushed hands and arms, severed fingers, and blindness,” says Brian
Boes, VP of operations at Rockford Systems.

The Sensing-Saf-Start has a reset button that must be pushed to restart the machine once power has been lost and
then restored. It is designed for easy, fast installation by tying into e-stops on a wide variety of machines, including
drill presses, tool grinders, and band saws.

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Rockford Systems | Machine Safety Compliance 101

About the Author: Sheila Kennedy

Sheila Kennedy,
CMRP, is a
professional
freelance writer
specializing in
industrial and
technical topics. She established
Additive Communications in 2003 to
serve software, technology, and
service providers in industries such
as manufacturing and utilities, and
became a contributing editor and
Technology Toolbox columnist for
Plant Services in 2004. Prior to
Additive Communications, she had 11
years of experience implementing
industrial information systems.
Kennedy earned her B.S. at Purdue
University and her MBA at the
University of Phoenix. She can be
reached at sheila@addcomm.com.

Automatic machine stops with radio frequency (RF) presence sensing, or RF guarding, combine RF signal
transmission with capacitive presence sensing. The PC1000 Proxagard from Gordon Engineering is an example of
this technology. It can guard areas around corners for multiplane 3-D coverage; it’s immune to vibrations from
machinery and other sources; and it broadcasts an adjustable signal radially out.

“RF guarding technology uses a coupler that generates a low-level RF field around the antenna,” explains Steve
Weighart, president of Gordon Engineering. “Any part of a person or object intruding into the area around which the
antenna is placed attenuates the signal. The control unit senses the attenuated field and triggers a machine stop.”

Safe-speed drives

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VSDs designed with machine safety and cyber-security in mind provide extra protection for an operation’s human
and networked assets. Altivar Machine drives from Schneider Electric have several built-in safety features. The
Altivar 320 has SIL3/PLe-rated safe torque off (STO), full monitoring functionalities with safe stop (SS1), safe limited
speed (SLS), safe maximum speed (SMS), and guard door lock (GDL), says James Crook, senior staff electrical
engineer at Schneider Electric. The Altivar 340 offers an embedded solution featuring STO with dual inputs
compliant with SIL3/PLe and Achilles Level 2 certification for cyber-security.

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