Plant & Machinery Safety Zone debuts at Health & Safety ’10 North

New for Health & Safety ’10 North is the launch of a dedicated Plant & Machinery Safety Zone
which aims to help those with responsibilities in this area stay abreast of the latest related
legislation and innovations

Plant and machinery safety is a
specialist area with those involved
having to use knowledge of
electrical and mechanical engineering, as
well as needing to stay abreast of
legislative developments such as the new
Machinery Safety Directive. To this end
general health and safety events don’t
really meet the needs of the engineer, as
endless exhibition stands with safety
gloves on them are not that much help
when trying to fit a laser scanner on a
robot manufacturing cell. For those
seeking specialist education, consultancy,
hardware and software the new ‘Plant &
Machinery Safety Zone’ has been added to
Health & Safety ’10 – North.

Sponsored by the Laidler Group, one of
the UK’s leading machinery safety and
compliance consultants the new ‘Plant
and Machinery Safety Zone’ will take
place at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton on
13-14th October 2010.

The biggest most recognisable names in
the specialist field of machinery safety are
taking part in the zone alongside Laidler
Associates and sister Group company
Safety Systems Technology. Wieland
Electric – a leader in the field of pluggable
connections for building system
technology and industrial automation;
Rockwell Automation – provider of
power, control and information systems
and services; sensor manufacturer and
supplier SICK UK and aluminium profiles
and modular building components
supplier Minitec UK. Plus, these
companies have recently been joined by
Pilz and Siemens.

Free educational seminars
Education is a major part of the zone’s
offering and there will be a dedicated
stream of free educational seminars
running throughout the two days of the
event. Rockwell Automation will
demonstrate how the safety standards are
changing, clarifying what the new EU
Directive means and how you can protect
your personnel and machinery from
everyday risk without adversely affecting
productivity, to meet safety goals and help
protect people, machines, processes and
the environment. The presentation will
also run through the use of SISTEMA – a
software tool used for the evaluation of
applications to ISO 13849-1.

Laidler Associates, will give a
presentation on Practical machinery safety
including guarding issues. Using its virtual
reality system to re-create a typical
working environment Laidler is able to
bring to life the problems that are present
and demonstrate how to provide safe
solutions. Focusing on the practical,
Laidler will also demonstrate how to
complete and document a PUWER 98
(Provision and Use of Work Equipment
Regulations 98) assessment or CE
Marking to the Machinery and Low
Voltage Directives. The presentation will
also cover the requirements of EN 62061
and the new Machinery Directive,
2006/42/EC in this regard.

Latest technology
As well as education, visitors will also be
able to discuss the latest technology, both
hardware and software, with the experts
from the respective companies. Safety
Systems Technology, for example, is a
machinery safety design and installation
specialist not tied to any single safety
product vendor, enabling it to design and
install a best of breed solution.

New technology will be available with
companies such as SICK (UK) launching
its new software upgrade for its intuitive
Flexi Soft Controller. The new version of
the Flexi Soft Designer Software, Designer
v1.3 enables the connection of up to four
Flexi Soft Controllers up to 100m, in
series, with an online view of the set up.

The addition of the Plant & Machinery
Safety Zone to Health and Safety ’10 –
North means that the event has more
content than ever before for machine
builders, system integrators and
consultants as well as engineers from
virtually any industry and at any level, not
just health and safety professionals.