Machine Safety Guarding Systems

AMS designs and integrates machine safety guarding as part of a broader controls and systems engineering practice. The guarding we deliver is engineered for the specific machine it protects: how operators interact with it, how it’s maintained, the throughput it must sustain, and the control architecture presently in place.

Most machine safety guarding failures aren’t failures of the guarding itself. They’re failures of guarding that wasn’t designed around how the machine is operated. A fence in the wrong place creates a workaround. A light curtain in the wrong location adds cycle time. A door interlock that ignores maintenance realities gets defeated by frustrated operators. Sometimes process challenges that require frequent machine access need correction to eliminate the need for frequent operator access behind the guarding. These are engineering problems, and they’re the problems AMS is adept at solving.

Why Customers Come to AMS

Most of the machine safety upgrades and retrofits AMS takes on involve legacy equipment that falls short of present day safety standards. The trigger varies: a new corporate safety initiative, a leadership or ownership change, an internal audit, or a near-miss on the floor. The process required is the same regardless of scope: bring the machine up to current safety standards with minimal production interruption, and without forcing operators and maintenance staff into creative workarounds.

What We Do

AMS designs and integrates complete machine safety guarding systems, not just physical barriers. A typical project may include any combination of:

• Physical guarding: perimeter fencing, interlocked access doors, fixed-position guards
• Presence and position sensing: light curtains, area scanners, safety interlocks, and safety-rated position sensors
• Safety control systems: safety PLCs, safety relays, and distributed safety I/O
• Energy isolation: safety-rated drives, dump valves, and contactors for electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic energy

We are platform-agnostic and work to customer preferences and existing plant standards. In practice, we most often deploy Rockwell GuardLogix and Siemens safety PLCs. For safety area scanners and sensors, we work with Keyence, Allen-Bradley, Banner, Sick, Pilz, and Balluff depending on the application.

The Engineering Difference

Many customers arrive with a partial picture of what they need, often “a fence and a light curtain.” Part of our job is expanding that picture into a complete machine safety guarding system. One that will not only hold up in production but increase machine availability and reliability thus enhancing production.

Risk assessment informs the design. 

Good safety system design starts with a clear understanding of the hazards. We perform a Hazard Injury Risk Assessments (HIRA) in-house when the scope calls for it. We also design from assessments the customer or a third party has previously completed.

When we lead the assessment, we primarily follow ISO 13849. Under that framework, each task/hazard pair on a machine has its own required Performance Level (PLr), determined by the severity, frequency, and avoidability of the hazard. A machine’s safety system combines those individual functions, each designed to its own PLr. It is not a single machine-wide rating. It’s a distinction that matters because designing every function to the highest PLr found anywhere on the machine can add cost and complexity that in the end, will not improve safety.

The safety system must be informed by, and respect how the machine is used. 

The best guarding design anticipates not just the operator, but the maintenance technician, the setup person, and the troubleshooter at 2 a.m. We design for the person keeping the machine running while also satisfying the inspector tasked with approving it.

Sometimes this means taking a different approach to a task rather than restricting it. On a paper converting machine running at several thousand feet per minute, an operator previously walked up to a web edge-detection sensor and adjusted its position by hand while watching the web. Once we introduced perimeter guarding, that location was inside the hazard zone. Rather than eliminate a necessary task or force a workaround, we installed a small linear actuator with pushbutton controls at the guard perimeter and position feedback displayed on the HMI. The operator now makes the same adjustment safely from outside the guarded area. That kind of solution is second nature to an integrator who thinks about guarding and controls as a single system to coordinate.

Credentials

Engineers with formal credentials in the field lead our safety work, including a TÜV Nord Certified Machinery Safety Expert (CMSE) and a B11 Licensed Machinery Safety Specialist (B11 LMSS). Combined with AMS’s controls engineering expertise, this is the foundation for machine safety guarding that works mechanically, electrically, and operationally. Together, they bring the technical depth required to design and integrate safety systems across a wide range of industries and hazard profiles.