With trust and transparency to safe machines

etz – Elek­tro­tech­nik & Auto­ma­tion repor­ted on the safety of our machi­nes. You can read the whole article below.

Niles-Sim­mons MC series CNC turn-mill machi­ning cen­ters enable eco­no­mical, fle­xi­ble, pre­cise, and user-fri­endly com­plete machi­ning of large, rota­tio­nally sym­me­tri­cal work­pie­ces in one clam­ping. For the N20 MC, N30 MC, and N40 MC machi­ning cen­ters, the risk assess­ment, veri­fi­ca­tion, and docu­men­ta­tion has recently been revi­sed with the sup­port of Wie­land Electric’s safety experts.

Machine safety is a mat­ter of trust in two respects. On the one hand, the ope­ra­tor trusts in the safe ope­ra­tion of a machine and thus in the care of the manu­fac­tu­rer. On the other hand, the equip­ment sup­plier relies on the exper­tise of inter­nal or exter­nal safety experts to design and cir­cu­late their machi­nes safely in accordance with the appli­ca­ble stan­dards and direc­ti­ves. For the machine manu­fac­tu­rer, a CE docu­men­ta­tion that is coher­ent in con­tent and struc­tu­red is also a seal of qua­lity that enables them to pre­sent them­sel­ves trans­par­ently to cus­to­mers and thus gene­rate las­ting trust.

This kind of trans­pa­rency also plays an important role for Niles-Sim­mons Indus­trie­an­la­gen GmbH in Chem­nitz, a lea­ding manu­fac­tu­rer of machine tools for metal cut­ting. The com­pany the­r­e­fore deci­ded to have the docu­men­ta­tion for seve­ral machine tool types adapted by safety experts from Wie­land Elec­tric. “We have been loo­king for a relia­ble safety ser­vice pro­vi­der for quite some time, because the so-cal­led ‘view from out­side’ is very important to us in risk assess­ment and veri­fi­ca­tion,” explains Dirk Wer­ner, team coor­di­na­tor elec­tri­cal design at Niles-Sim­mons. “Wie­land Elec­tric pro­ved in a first pro­ject that we are in good hands here when it comes to safety ser­vice, which is why we finally recei­ved a fol­low-up order for two more machine types.”

CE pro­cess for a CNC machi­ning center

Spe­ci­fi­cally, Wieland’s safety con­sul­tants have accom­pa­nied the CE pro­cess, first for a small CNC machi­ning cen­ter from Niles-Sim­mons and then for two other machi­nes of the same series. The machine-spe­ci­fic stan­dards for the cor­re­spon­ding machine type were sel­ec­ted and applied, in this case the C stan­dard DIN EN ISO 23125 (tur­ning machi­nes). In addi­tion, the experts also used B stan­dards such as DIN EN ISO 13849–1 (func­tional safety) and DIN EN ISO 11161 (inte­gra­ted manu­fac­tu­ring sys­tems) to imple­ment safety.

In the course of the risk assess­ment, Wie­land Electric’s safety con­sul­tants iden­ti­fied and eva­lua­ted all hazards and defi­ned prac­ti­ca­ble risk reduc­tion mea­su­res which com­ply with the applied stan­dards. In addi­tion, a safety con­cept was also drawn up for the respec­tive machine types.

This was fol­lo­wed by the veri­fi­ca­tion of the safety func­tions of the machine tools accor­ding to DIN EN ISO 13849–1. In order to pro­vide mathe­ma­ti­cal proof that the exe­cu­tion of func­tional safety at least cor­re­sponds to the per­for­mance levels defi­ned from the risk assess­ment, the Wie­land experts eva­lua­ted all rele­vant cir­cuit dia­grams, docu­ments, and parts lists, deter­mi­ned the safety cha­rac­te­ristics of the com­pon­ents used, and con­firmed the veri­fi­ca­tion using a soft­ware tool. In the last step, the ope­ra­ting manu­als of the machine tools were che­cked. These docu­ments are cru­cial for the machine user to be able to ope­rate machi­nes safely in accordance with the regulations.

Modu­lar sys­tem for risk assessment

Bern­hard Scholz, sales engi­neer at Wie­land Elec­tric, knows only too well that the sub­ject of safety is time-con­sum­ing and resource-inten­sive: “Honestly, very few machine and plant manu­fac­tu­r­ers have time to deal with machine safety inten­si­vely and com­pre­hen­si­vely,” says B. Scholz. “The­r­e­fore, it is all the more important to have a part­ner at your side who pro­vi­des the neces­sary exper­tise both cus­to­mer- and appli­ca­tion-ori­en­ted. We work tog­e­ther with the machine manu­fac­tu­rer to deve­lop indi­vi­dual solu­tion pro­po­sals and always adapt our approach to the needs of our part­ner.” Ano­ther joint pro­ject is alre­ady being plan­ned, in which Wie­land is deve­lo­ping a tem­p­late in the sense of a modu­lar con­s­truc­tion kit for Niles-Sim­mons, which will enable the desi­gners to carry out the neces­sary risk assess­ment for the respec­tive func­tion of the machi­nes easily and safely themselves.

Link (Ger­man): https://www.smart-production.de/etz/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/News/mit-vertrauen-und-transparenz-zu-sicheren-maschinen-20202115/

Aut­hor: Bruno Schäff­ler, Wie­land Elec­tric GmbH