By Jeff Shepard Contributed By DigiKey's North American Editors
Safety laser scanners can contribute to safety in industrial and logistics facilities. They can protect people from unsafe interactions with machines, and they can protect machines from unintended interference by people.
and looks at representative safety laser scanners from IDEC, Omron, SICK, and Banner Engineering.
Scanner or curtain? One of the first considerations is: what physical space is being protected? Both scanners and light curtains can protect people from harm and protect machines from interference. While there is some overlap in the protective capabilities of scanners and light curtains, they are generally suited to different applications, such as: Point-of-operation protection, which refers to the active area of a machine where work is performed. Light curtains are suited for this application since they can be positioned in an optimal location, and their resolution can be set up to detect fingers, hands, or feet/ legs and provide the required level of protection. Scanners usually need a longer minimum distance from hazards because of their longer response times and are not generally used for point-of- operation protection. Perimeter protection, which guards multiple sides of a machine. Like point-of-operation protection, light curtains are well suited to provide compact solutions for perimeter
Several factors are needed to maximize the effectiveness of
safety laser scanners. The first is to determine if a laser scanner is the best solution or if another technology, like a light curtain, may be better suited for the application. Once it's been determined that a scanner is the best choice, there are important decisions to make, including the: ■ Selection of the optimal safety protection fields and field sets ■ Use of a standard like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 13855 for positioning safeguards with respect to the approach of a person ■ Selection of the correct multiple sampling value ■ Selection of a scanner with the optimal feature set This article starts by reviewing the factors that affect when to choose a scanner and when to choose a light curtain. It then presents the important selection criteria for using scanners
we get technical
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