Plug-and-play safety system spots humans

Traditionally, installing a safety access system that can distinguish between products and people has required a complex combination of light barriers, other sensors and controllers to achieve a "muting" effect. Configuring and programming such an installation requires considerable skill and a lot of on-site wiring.

Now the safety specialist Leuze Mayser has come up with a system which simplifies the installation of safe entry and exit systems by providing them in a pre-configured "plug and play" format. The company claims that this is the first packaged system to include muting and self-diagnostics as standard.

The two key elements of the new system are safety light barriers and machine safety interface (MSI) controllers. The light barriers and muting sensors are mounted on a framework with all of the intermediate wiring going to an enclosed control box on the framework of a fixed guard.

After discussing the technology with potential users, Leuze Mayser engineers have developed five basic arrangements of the system which, they believe, will meet the needs of about 70% of the market. One, for example, allows the passage of irregular shaped pallets through the safety beams. Another uses inductive loops to sense the presence of forklift truck allowing it to load or offload pallets, while preventing a walking person from gaining access to the protected area.