Safety light curtains provide better protection than mats

Stewart Milne Timber Systems is one of the UK's leading providers of 'timber system solutions' to the house building and commercial sectors. Its fully-automated production facility at Witney, Oxfordshire, houses two state-of-the-art saw machines that process the raw timber through several stages to create the final product. With the multiple processes and the fact that production is continuous, it is necessary for each stage of the production process to be separated from its neighbours by a gap to allow access for maintenance and fault analysis.

Essentially, the entire length of the machine is therefore made up of several different production sections, each separated by a gap. To ensure the ultimate safety of all personnel working along the process, it is important to have safety measures installed to stop the machine should anyone breach the gaps when production in any of the sections around that gap is in operation.

One of the machines was originally supplied with safety mats on the floor within each of the gaps, but it was found that the mats could be avoided by standing on the side of the machine or stepping over them. To overcome this, it was decided to remove the mats and install Jokab Safety light curtains across each gap instead. Although the width of the gap through the production line was in excess of 4m, the entire gap width was covered by two sets of the Jokab Safety Focus light curtain, model F4-35-1650, horizontally across the gap, making it impossible to step over into the gap area.

Complete coverage

Providing BS EN 954-1 Safety Category 4 protection within a housing measuring 1650mm in length and with four gaps to cover, this has proved a highly successful installation with 100 per cent coverage of each gap, making it impossible to breach any gap during production. Due to the success of the initial installation on the first machine, it is now envisaged that the second machine will be fitted with the same system in due course.

Jokab Safety, founded in 1988 and headquartered in Sweden, is now recognised as one of the worlds leading manufacturers of safety products and systems. The company policy of continuous product development has resulted in many innovative products being introduced. As well as the Focus safety light curtain installed at Stewart Milne, Jokab Safety can provide an entire spectrum of safety products. These include safety PLC systems, safety relays, enabling devices, safety strips/bumpers/mats, safety sensors, interlock switches, machine safety fencing, safety roller doors and machine diagnostic software and instrumentation.

Jokab Safety has specialist expertise in the practical application of machinery safety systems to all production environments. In this case, as two leading manufacturers in their field, the tie-up between Stewart Milne and Jokab Safety has resulted in secure yet cost-effective safeguarding of a modern, though potentially dangerous, production facility. The overall result is maximum productivity with a high degree of safety.