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Timestamp: 2017-09-26 21:39:12
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Home >> Robot safety >> Quantitative risk assessment
Manufacturing safety and compliance with the law
"Big machinery requires a thorough approach to safety and compliance"
This ABB IRB 6700 can lift 235Kg and reach out 2.65 metres from its mounting point. It is built mainly from aluminium castings and when it swings at full extent it can reach velocities of up to 4.5 metres per second.
There are some serious safety issues to consider as well as compliance with the law, so Geku Automation needed someone who had experience in engineering, the law and standards, and who could understand quantitative risk assessment, that's not the finger in the air stuff.
I knew I had an interesting challenge on my hands even before familiarising myself with the 24 volt logic, Programmable Logic Controllers, pneumatics and hydraulics, conveyors, guards and safety systems, of the three robot production line under construction.
My time was divided between the shop floor and the office and I was often on the stairs in between.
My big task - making sure that the machine was safe and legal.
Of course I was working with some experienced engineers who knew very well what they were doing 99% of the time and some welcomed me as the guy that was going to read all the law and standards for them, while a few assumed I was there to impose senseless rules on the workplace.
They didn't know that I will never submit to senseless rules on the basic principle that our first responsibility is to do it right, and following senseless rules is a sure way to mess up big time.
I am glad to say that most of the requirements aren't senseless and for those that are, there are ways to deal with them.
Because we are often reducing the chance of failure from once in 100 years to sometimes less than once in 100,000 years we might seem a bit pedantic at times.
"Well it works doesn't it!" is not the same as saying "If my life depended on this working every time, I would be totally confident." A strike on the head from a working robot is likely to be fatal.
We can't let that happen to you, or your son or daughter or friend or anyone else, and that's why I want to know exactly what the "robot move" signal in that cable is and to be sure it can't be sent as a result of a fault of ony sort.
I want to know that the chance of a false signal in a fault condition is about the same as the chance that a drain pipe left out in the wind will play the national anthem.
Click for more about quantitative risk assessment...
The law starts from the EU Directives which say that governments should make laws in their own countries that require manufacturers of machinery to do and consider certain things. The directives list those things pretty clearly and so the governments usually just repeat the list. They primarily set safety requirements. The directives that effected us were;
the the Machinery Directive 2006-43-EC,
the Low Voltage Directive 2014-35-EU, and
the ElectroMagnetic Compatibility Directive 2014-30-EU.
There are others. They are enacted as law in the UK in the form of;
the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008, as amended by the Supply of Machinery (Safety) (Amendment) Regulations 2011,
the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994 and
the Electromagnetic Compatibility Regulations 2016.
Compliance is intended to be enforced by the HSE but they have plenty to do at the moment meaning that it is very easy for companies to issue Declarations of Conformity and to CE mark non-compliant equipment! That may be what a lot of them do right now, perhaps thinking that to say you have done something is as good as having done it! If they are following good practice After all 95% of the time they will comply with what is in the Directives but 5% of the time they will not.
My first job was to turn the requirements listed in the directives into checklists i.e. filtering out the legal and delivering checklists that could be applied by people in the company to their work.
How a business fulfils the directives requirements is partly up to them however there are already an extensive set of methods embodied in the various BS EN and ISO standards which lay out recommended ways to do things.
If, for example, you choose to ignore
"10218-1:2011 BS EN ISO Robots and robotic devices - Safety requirements for industrial robots Part 1: Robots"
in your work with robots you are hardly likely to convince anybody that when an accident happens, you weren't being negligent.
If on the other hand, you go through it and make a conscious decision to do something differently from the recommendation given, then provided you can justify it sensibly and show why it was better and safer than the recommendation, you have a strong case.
Indeed if you simply follow the recommendations blindly you may well not have a case at all. Directives and standards requires intelligent application not blind obedience.
"Geku Automation are a leading UK based Industrial Robot integrator and Automation Systems supplier and for many years they have been providing automation solutions to all sectors of manufacturing industry. Whatever your requirements, whether it's the smallest automation project or a large multiple robot based turnkey automation system, Geku can offer a solution."
www.geku.co.uk
My second job was to compile a list of the standards we needed to comply with and there was a few, 29 to be precise. It pretty rare for a business with a turn over under £10m to have to deal with so much and that is why I was called in.
There is a lot of overlap between the standards and they are far from perfect sometimes being verbose and imprecise but they do contain a great deal that should be practised and a very few things which should not. Ploughing through is a mission and then checking what you have read against the machinery another.
At one point I spent an hour or two sitting on the end of a roller conveyor with a printout of BS EN ISO 4413:2010 on hydraulic fluid power and a pencil running between the hydraulics and my perch.
The majority of what is in the standards comes directly from the experience of people who have been in the industry over many years and perhaps can "do it" better than they can "say it".
This is precisely why any successful engineering business is likely to find that it is already 95% compliment. Some industries need to consider just one or two standards but some unfortunately have a greater responsibility and robotic manufacturing is one of these.
Does all this work make a difference? Yes it does. Two examples;
Standards reminded us to check the compatibility of edible hydraulic oil with PVC cable insulation. If an oil could cause a cable to deteriorate in 4 years rather than 40 years, that is a safety problem and one that could not be detected by the "Well it works doesn't it," approach.
Working out the likely acceleration to a bare head struck by the aluminium casting of a robot arm in full motion, and plugging that into the "Head Injury Criterion" formula, tells us that fatality is the likely outcome. Developers do occasionally work close to robots running at full speed and in these circumstances they need to seriously review the safety issues. Protective head gear would be a start though not enough to protect against a direct impact.
Re-assuring ourselves and the customer that we have taken all the steps necessary; checked the limits of every part to determine the limits of the machinery, set the maintenance schedule, determined the safety proceedures based on real rather than imagined hazards, and advised them appropriately, so their system to run safely for 20 years or more, that is a valuable service and one that makes a product stand out in the market place.
Because there were so many standards to look at I catagorised them under 9 headings. I doubt most engineering businesses would need to comply with all these but I thought I would give you some idea of the work load in robotic production lines.
12100:2010 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - General principles for design - Risk assessment and risk reduction
14121-1 2007 ISO Safety of machinery - Risk assessment - Part 1: Principles (withdrawn but proved useful!)
14121-2 ISO-TR Safety of machinery - Risk assessment - Part 2: Practical guidance and examples of methods
19353:2016 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Fire prevention and fire protection
Robots & Integrated Manufacturing
11161:2007 +A1:2010 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Integrated manufacturing systems - Basic requirements
10218-1:2011 BS EN ISO Robots and robotic devices - Safety requirements for industrial robots Part 1: Robots
10218-2:2011 ISO Robots and robotic devices - Safety - requirements for industrial robots - Part 2: Robot systems and integration
Design and Integration of Safety-Related Parts of Control Systems (SRP/CS)
13849-2:2012 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Safety- related parts of control systems Part 2: Validation
62061:2005 +A2:2015 BS EN Safety of machinery - Functional safety of safety-related electrical, electronic and programmable electronic control systems 13849 replaces 62061
Design & Construction of Guards
14119:2013 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Interlocking devices associated with guards - Principles for design and selection
14120:2015 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Guards - General requirements for the design and construction of fixed and movable guards
13854:1996 ISO Safety of machinery -- Minimum gaps to avoid crushing of parts of the human body
13855:2010 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Positioning of safeguards with respect to the approach speeds of parts of the human body (ISO 13855:2010)
13857:2008 BS EN ISO Safety of machinery - Safety distances to prevent hazard zones being reached by upper and lower limbs RR
62046:2008 DD CLC/TS Safety of machinery - Application of protective equipment to detect the presence of persons
61496-1:2013 BS EN Safety of machinery - Electro-sensitive protective equipment Part 1: General requirements and tests
Hydraulics, Pneumatics & Conveyors
4413:2010 BS EN ISO - Hydraulic fluid power - General rules and safety requirements for systems and their components
4414:2010 BS EN ISO Pneumatic fluid power - General rules and safety requirements for systems and their components
619:2002 +A1:2010 BS EN Continuous handling equipment and systems Ã� Safety and EMC requirements for equipment for mechanical handling of unit loads
Electrics & EMC
1037:1995 +A1:2008 BS EN Safety of machinery - Prevention of unexpected start-up
13850:2015 ISO Safety of machinery - Emergency stop function - Principles for design
50565-1:2014 BS EN Electric cables - Guide to use for cables with a rated voltage not exceeding 450/750 V (U 0 /U) - Part 1: General guidance
60204-1:2006 +A1:2009 BS EN Safety of machinery - Electrical equipment of machines - Part 1: General requirements
61000-6-2:2005 BS EN Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) - Part 6-2: Generic standards - Immunity for industrial environments
Signs Signals & Instructions
61310-1:2008 BS EN Safety of machinery - Indication, marking and actuation - Part 1: Requirements for visual, acoustic and tactile signals
61310-2:2008 BS EN Safety of machinery - Indication, marking and actuation - Part 2: Requirements for marking
61310-3:2008 BS EN Safety of machinery - Indication, marking and actuation - Part 3: Requirements for the location and operation of actuators
82079-1:2012 BS EN Preparation of instructions for use - Structuring, content and presentation Part 1: General principles and detailed requirements