Manufacturing personnel working in the discrete and hybrid industries who interact with industrial machinery must be vigilant to protect their safety. How can technology assist in providing safer operations?
A whitepaper, Flexible Zoned Safety approach reduces machine safety complexity and improves productivity and overall equipment effectiveness, describes how this approach reduces complexity in the design of redundant pneumatic safety circuits and improves machine productivity.
The whitepaper’s author highlights some types of machines in specific industries that would benefit from zoned safety.
A strong emphasis on safety is especially important for those industries that use machines that incorporate horizontal or vertical movement and require intermittent to frequent operator interaction (e.g. load/unload operations). These industries include automotive, packaging, pharmaceutical, process, stamping, general machining, assembly operations, and tire production.
Challenges include:
…when changes are made to improve a machine’s safety, operations can become even more complex or more restrictive. These safety measures often incorporate time-consuming procedures to stop machine operation, isolate energy, resolve issues, and restart processes – all of which translate into lost production time.
In the earlier approach to machine safety:
…the design of machinery that has pneumatic components has traditionally involved employing separate safety circuits with redundant dump valves, which shut off air supply, release air, and disable operation of the entire machine.
Not only does this waste energy through the loss of compressed air, recharge time is increased, reducing equipment availability and overall production.
Three basic safety functions include releasing the energy, returning home, and stopping/inhibiting motion. However, in many instances, it would be more efficient to stop/inhibit motion, return home, or use some combination of the safety functions tailored to the specific safety requirements of the equipment.
A zoned safety approach inhibits specific portions of a machine while the rest operates normally. This technology is part of the ASCO Numatics Zoned-Safety manifold.
Zoned Safety technology is a pneumatic circuit configuration isolates air supplies to keep operators safe without disrupting production. The affected section of the system is shut down instead of dumping the air out of the entire machine.
One G3 fieldbus zoned safety manifold can control up to three zones. A given zone can enact a combination of redundant safety functions, such as stop motion, return home, exhaust air, unclamp, and remain clamped, according to the safety requirements for that zone.
This approach:
…allows an engineer to define and set up as many as three independent electropneumatic safety zones, while also allowing independent non-safe sections to co-exist within a single valve island assembly. The ASCO Numatics Zoned Safety manifold has been evaluated by TÜV Rheinland and is compatible up to category 3 PLd.
When designed into the manifold platform:
…no redesign or safety redundant dump valve is required for zone control, and the user has optimal choices when selecting valve options, accessories, and flow requirements. The assembled product is very similar to a standard valve manifold that has been used by OEMs and machine builders for many years.
Download the whitepaper to learn more about how you can benefit from this technology, how it’s applied in an automation workflow, and how overall complexity is reduced.
Visit the Machine Safety section on Emerson.com for more on Zoned Safety Technology and how it helps provide reliable machine safety with minimal production downtime.
