Luiz Shida is a marketing specialist at IDEC Corporation and responsible for safety product marketing. Since joining IDEC Japan HQ more than seven years ago, he has become certified as a safety sub-assessor in Japan.
Machinery and OEM designers know that building safety into their equipment is a fundamental requirement. To ensure a consistent approach, the ISO 13849 standard provides guidance for machinery control systems that are applied to provide safety functions for machinery.
Safety circuits used in machine guarding applications incorporate devices such as sensors and relays to de-energize equipment if any hazardous condition is detected. These conditions normally involve a machine guard not being closed, a presence sensor detecting personnel in an unsafe area or the triggering of an emergency stop function.