Upgrading Machinery Safety

📝 ARTICLE TITLE: Upgrading Machinery Safety Components

By Steven Achilleos,
Published in Prolocon Technical Insights

Introduction: Industrial Safety

Many factories still run older, mechanically sound production lines. These lines have been runnning and producing products serving the community for many years. If an upgrade is required to modernise the equipment it usually always means a safety upgrade is needed as well. We cannot accept that the safety of a machine is compliant simply because an incident has not occured. However if a critical incident occurs, the consequences can be major and in extreme cases, catastrophic.

Minimising and/or eliminate hazards during machine overhauls.

Modernize your legacy infrastructure may include the following:

• Redundant Safety Controllers: Isolate safety architecture from standard PLC code. Use dual-channel circuitry, and safety programmers to capure a fault in the event of the failure of a single component.
• Safety Light Curtains: Can be used in various environments to trigger well designed safety actions in the event of a breach
• Coded Magnetic Interlocks: Use of coded magnetic interlocks on all access door adds a level of protection greater than standard magnetic switches.
• Safe-Stopping Sequences: Installing VFDs with Safe Torque Off (STO) can help in preventing mechanical damage.

The Operational Return on Investment:

• Fast Diagnostics: Safety alerts can be fed directly to your HMIs, showing the exact device which caused an alert. This will assist operators to restart the line.
• Workforce Trust: By providing and promoting safety improvements can boost site morale and trust of machine operators.