Page 14 - MetalForming November 2016

Safety Update
Tower Clears the Air
Hypertherm Honored for Safety Practices
Kemper America, Alpharetta, GA, introduces the CleanAir Tower, ideal for use wherever local extraction does not work or proves insufficient. It effectively protects employees and machines from fine dust, while creating little or no air tur- bulence, ensuring that no dust is distributed into clean areas. It not only protects workers, but also helps minimize maintenance of welding machin- ery, preventing potentially harmful fine dust
Hypertherm, a manufacturer of plasma-, laser- and waterjet- cutting systems, has earned OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) Star recognition for its manufacturing facility on Heater Road in Lebanon, NH. The recognition means that all seven of Hypertherm’s New Hampshire manufacturing locations are des- ignated VPP Star worksites.
from getting into tools and equipment.
The Clean Air Tower is perfect for:
• Production and logistics areas;
• Environments where smoke and dust
The U.S. Department of Labor’s OSHA VPP Program acknowl- edges organizations that have outstanding safety and health practices. Before receiving this honor, Hypertherm had to demon- strate a comprehensive safety and health management system involving associates from all levels of the organization. In addition, Hypertherm had to submit detailed records and undergo rigorous five-day evaluations by teams of OSHA professionals. The program also required that Hypertherm maintain injury and illness rates significantly below U.S. Government averages for its industry. For 2015, Hypertherm’s rate was less than two incidents per 100 full-time associates, compared with an industry average of more than four incidents per 100 workers.
sources constantly change;
• Supplementing other local exhaust ven-
tilation; and
• Workshops that don’t have adequate
local exhaust ventilation or where it is oth- erwise not possible.
Hypertherm: www.hypertherm.com
Features include a cyclone prefilter, a W3 welding-fume separation class, greater than 99.97-percent filter
efficiency and a two-stage PTFE membrane cleanable filter.
Head to Orlando for Robot-Safety and Risk-Assessment Training
Kemper America: www.kemperamerica.com
Light Curtain Tailored for Safeguarding Hydraulic Press Brakes
On Thursday, December 8, 2016, the Robotic Industries Association (RIA) will host a one-day robot-safety seminar in Orlando, FL, reviewing the requirements of the ANSI/R15.06 Robot Safety Standard document. Students will receive a thorough introduction to all of the essential information contained in the standard, and will learn the basic safety guidelines for robotic applications. They’ll also learn to identify key elements of the standard and apply its provisions in daily operations.
ISB, Lachine, Quebec, Canada, has introduced the MX 4300 series of light curtains for guarding hydraulic press brakes. The newly designed light curtain incorporates a dual-channel linear encoder designed to monitor the position and speed of the ram.
Students attending this seminar will be guided through each stage of a risk assessment, including the identification of possible hazards; how to determine risk-reduction requirements; solutions to reduce risk; validation of proposed solutions; and how to document the risk assessment.
When a sheetmetal part is being processed in a press brake, it usually blocks one or more beams of a light curtain’s protective field. Due to the nature of the fabrication process (e.g. multiple bends and flanges), the blocked areas may change from one operation to the next, making it difficult for a conventional guarding system to provide adequate protection without reducing the usability and productivity of the machine.
Learn more and register to attend at www.robotics.org/events- detail.cfm?id=327.
The MX4300, by ensuring that the dangerous part of the machine always moves at a safe speed when it is moving through the blanked area, provides an effective reduction of the risks associated with the intrusion of limbs behind the shadow created by a blanked flange, without hampering throughput. The MX4300 also takes advantage of its integral position transducer to provide an automatic muting function of the light curtain’s protective field without requiring the use of external limit switches or additional muting sensors.
Innovative Pallet-Jack Safety Solution
MX4300 light curtain units are available in two physical resolutions while the protective-field height covers 300 to 1200 mm.
ISB: www.isblite.com
On most manual pallet jacks, the back wheels are exposed, presenting a danger to the feet of operators or bystanders. By encasing the wheels of the manual pallet jack, the FootGuardian safety guard reduces the exposure associated with foot rollover injuries. The FootGuardian is a self-adjusting mechanism that conforms to the irregularities and pitches of truck ramps and allows a full range of motion for steering. www.thefootguardian.com
12 MetalForming/November 2016
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