Revised Standards Address Safety Requirements for Plastics Machinery

The Plastics Industry Trade Association and the American National Standards Institute recently announced the publication of two revised and approved national standards that contain detailed safety requirements for plastics machinery.

ANSI/SPI B151.20 – 2013 Safety Requirements for Plastics Sheet Production Machinery and ANSI/SPI B151.27 – 2013 Safety Requirements for the Integration of Robots with Injection Molding Machines “represent significant and substantive changes from the previous editions,” the Plastics Industry Trade Association said.  

• B151.20 specifies the requirements for the manufacture, care and use of plastics sheet production machinery to minimize hazards to personnel. The newly revised standard includes updates to reflect changes in technology and provides additional explanatory materials, illustrations and definitions.
• B151.27 addresses the integration, care and use of robots used with injection molding machines to minimize hazards to personnel. Complicated by the variety and sizes of machines and robots manufactured, the standard approaches the problem of integration safety from three different areas: to eliminate recognized hazards by design criteria; establish standard approaches to design; and safeguard the point of operation to protect the operator from recognized hazards.

To assist in the interpretation of the requirements, the standards assign responsibilities to the supplier, the remanufacturer, the modifier and the user.

Both are considered Type C standards based on the ISO Type A-B-C standard level structure.  ISO Type A standards (basis standards) provide basic concepts, principles for design and general aspects that can be applied to machinery. ISO Type B (generic safety standards) address one or more safety aspects or one or more types of safeguards that can be used across a range of machinery.

Other SPI/ANSI standards address the safety requirements for injection molding machines, extrusion machines and blow molding machines.