Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC also addressed the hazards that can be induced without the proper protection of the machine. That is why guarding is specifically mentioned in the Essential Health and Safety Requirements EHSRs of the relevant directive. Essential Health and Safety requirements include the safety checks for the protection of machine that the manufacturers must ensure before getting the standardized CE marking. Though guards provide essential safety checks and protection to the machine as well as the environment, these are often casually treated and resulted in many injuries and accidents throughout the world. This casual handling make them an issue of utter importance.
Section 1.4.2.1 of the Essential Health and Safety Requirement provides certain situations and conditions to provide foolproof guarding to the machine
- The fixed guards must only be removed with the aid of tools and not otherwise
- No other ordinary machine related screw and bolts could be used for attaching the guards and the specific system of fixing guards must remain attached to them whenever these are removed. In specific case special provisions must be made to deviate from standard procedure
- Guards must be designed in a way that in any occasion of fall out of materials and objects through explosion, guards must be able to protect the environment and people by containing the hazard inside the machine
- The requirements also state that in event of removal of fixing the guard should not be capable of remaining in the position to give a false sense of security. This provision is specifically related to the designer of the machinery as they need to make sure that hinged guard opens automatically and the guard at the top of the machine are not retained in the original place by gravity when fixings are removed.
Fool-proofing Interlocks
Interlocking devices prevent the users from unsafe actions that are mentioned in BS EN 1088 and are relevant to guarding procedures as mentioned in the Machinery Directive. The interlocking devices are used to prevent any misuse by the operator when the operator takes short cuts or does not use the machinery correctly. The manufacturers of the interlocking devices in the machine must ensure that the interlocks carry little chance of defeat by the operators and do not produce conditions that deem hazardous for machine and the environment. Section 5.7 of BS EN1088 clearly states that "If the specification of the safety interlocking device is such that it is possible to defeat the safety function solely by a reasonably foreseeable action at the interlocking device itself and if the device itself is to be relied upon to prevent defeat, it should provide measures to minimize the possibility of defeat."
Though welding and gluing to foolproof any tampering attempt by the operator yet it is not advised by the BS EN1088. In contrast, it encourages the manufacturers to find the reason as to why tampering occurs and design the interlocks in a way to address the concern of operator and not hinder the performance by the guards provided for safety.
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