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Smart Steps you Can Take to Automating Safely
Equipment failures that lead to injuries do more than interrupt production and cause downtime. They expose manufacturers to liabilities. As more plants turn to collaborative robots and other forms of automation to complete jobs, concerns over safety persist.
Yet, factory workers who once bent wire using their hands and manual machinery are finding that automation is a safer alternative. Food processing workers who braved harsh conditions every working day to handle daily production and equipment maintenance are freed for less risky positions thanks to automation.
Smart planning, advanced software, and proper robotic cell design are important steps to manufacturing safety. Read this post and see what safety features you can implement in your work place.
How Maintenance has Evolved
When a machine breaks down, an operator may not take the needed safety precautions while troubleshooting the problem. If production stalls without warning, there's pressure to get things fixed right away and a rush job can lead to errors.
Maintenance techniques have improved. Instead of hiring technicians to mostly make repairs after failures, there was a move toward preventative maintenance. Scheduled inspections led to fewer breakdowns. Today's use of data-gathering sensors has led to another step forward and makes predictive maintenance possible, as mentioned in the article Motion Trends to Watch in 2016.
Sensors can alert operators to a variety of problems like a temperature increase that could cause lubricant breakdown in a gearbox. A spike in vibrations can indicate a bearing that’s ready to fail.
These potential problems could get overlooked during normally scheduled maintenance sessions, but predictive information can uncover the weak links and potential problems. The more smoothly that equipment operates, the more that troubleshooting hazards are reduced.
Risk Assessment Planning
If you could wipe the slate clean in your facility how would you plan safety features? Risk assessments are mandatory but how to conduct them is key. Just like companies want to be "customer-centric" in making products that meet the needs of buyers, a risk assessment plan should be "worker-centric" to understand how people interface with potential hazards. A comprehensive risk assessment should include maintenance and related tasks, as mentioned in the article Robot Safety, Everything but Routine.
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Robotic Software
Software advances are giving users opportunities to create safety simulations and help robots maintain a safe path. Hardware controlled limits were once the norm, but safety has taken a much needed step forward with "software-defined limits to robot motion," as noted in The Shrinking Footprint of Robot Safety. Innovative software functions are embedded in the latest robot controllers and that means less floor space is used up and there are fewer devices to track and use.
Some products to recently hit the market make simulation for tasks like designing a cell for robotics automation as easy as programming a CNC machine.
Cell Design
Users must understand the intent of all safety components as mentioned in the Robot Safety, Everything but Routine write-up. If they don't, they'll try to find ways around the safety barriers. Serious and fatal accidents with robots are rare but when they do happen, the ones involved are often skilled workers like mechanics and electricians. They want to get work done safely and quickly and often there's not easy access to fix the problem at hand.
There are robotic cell designs that allow the operator and maintenance technician to not be trapped by fixed guards. Other safety features in a cell can include roll-up barriers, light curtains and gate switches.
Take a holistic approach to safety. Where can your plant make use of data to track machine wear and tear? This reduces the risks of trouble-shooting quickly during critical production runs and helps technicians schedule parts replacement.
Work with a qualified integrator to do a risk assessment and learn about the internal safety controls of your robots. Finally, review the robotic cells to ensure they meet current safety standards.
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