Plastics Machinery Safety Standards Updated

Plastics Business

The Plastics Industry Trade Association and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have published two revised and approved American National Standards on plastics machinery safety. Both address detailed safety requirements for the specific machine or group of machines and represent significant and substantive changes from the previous editions.

B151.20 specifies the requirements for the manufacture, care and use of plastics sheet production machinery to minimize hazards to personnel associated with machine activity.

B151.27 addresses the integration, care and use of robots used with injection molding machines to minimize hazards to personnel associated with robot and machine activity. 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 these requirements in both standards, responsibilities have been assigned to the supplier, the remanufacturer, the modifier and the user.

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

For more information, or to order the revised standards or any of the SPI/ANSI plastics machinery safety standards, visit www.plasticsindustry.org or www.ansi.org.