Posted to News on 28th Mar 2016, 18:25
Updated and expanded Guide to Machinery Guarding Standards
Procter Machine Guarding has published an updated and expanded edition of On Your Guard - A Designer's Guide to Machinery Guarding Standards. This is a substantial revision of the popular guide, with updated and reorganised tables of machinery safety standards, new statistics for accidents involving machinery, more illustrations, and amendments to the Useful Resources and Further Information sections. As a result of these changes, this 11th edition of the guide now runs to 18 pages.
In common with previous editions, the new version of On Your Guard is available to download as a free PDF from the Procter Machine Guarding website. This publication will be very helpful for machine designers and also specifiers of machinery and machine guarding, plus anyone modifying or upgrading guarding on existing plant and equipment.
At the start of the guide there are fresh statistics relating to fatalities and injuries involving machinery; these figures have been sourced from the latest data published by the HSE (Health and Safety Executive). The section of the guide dealing with standards and other similar documents - which now lists over 100 items - has been both updated and reorganised to make it easier to use. In most cases readers will be CE marking to the Machinery Directive, so the standards are now divided into A-Type, B-Type and C-Type harmonised standards, with an additional list of non-harmonised standards and other publications that could be useful.
Other changes in the 11th edition of On Your Guard include more information about risk assessments and the hierarchical three-step process, additional detail about access controls, and comments about the new standard BS EN ISO 14120 (replacing BS EN 953) with respect to when fixed or movable guards should be used.
As with previous editions of this machine safety guide, there is important background information about the current health and safety regulations, the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations and their relationship with the European Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, together with the Directive's requirements relating to CE marking of machinery and guarding. Risk assessment and risk reduction are also covered, and the guide contains ample practical advice on how to design machine guards to comply with the applicable standards and regulations. Readers are directed towards the relevant standards and there are helpful discussions of topics such as materials of construction, lighting, noise reduction, fasteners, safety distances and ergonomics.
Anyone with responsibility for specifying, designing, installing or maintaining machine guards, whatever the nature of the 'machine' as defined in the Machinery Directive, will find the revised Guide to Machinery Guarding Standards essential reading. PDF copies are available free of charge from the Downloads section of the website.
