Safety
A fibre optic replacement for mechanical safety interlock switches
Banner Engineering's new Pico-Guard fibre optic safety system is claimed
to be a direct replacement for mechanical safety interlock switches in
machine guarding applications. The system comprises a controller and
various plug-in, snap-lock optical safety interlock switches and plastic
optical fibre cable.
There is no need to run any electrical wiring. Instead, the fibre cable
can be routed to the guarding points - even if they happen to be in a
hazardous area. The controller offers four separate optical channels,
each of which can control multiple optical safety interlocks in the same
network.
Pic-Guard meets ISO 13849-1 (EN954-1) Category 4 requirements. The
guarding method is designed so that a single switch point per door will
meet Safety Category 4 applications - believed by Banner to be a first in
the industry. The controller has been rigorously tested to ensure that no
single system component failure will create a fail-to-dangerous condition.