Sensible safety standards

摘要

Over the past decade, concern has been expressed, notably by automotive component suppliers in Germany, that manufacturing competitiveness in the EU is disadvantaged because skilled operators are prevented from closely observing and intervening in automatic cycle operations on machining centres and similar CNC machines. The current so-called Mode 3 allows for spindle rotation via an enabling device, such as a hand-held pendant. Germany has consistently argued for an additional mode that avoids enabling devices. But Mode 4-as it has been dubbed - has been opposed and machines so constructed are not CE compliant.