Standards

Compliance to the Machinery Directive is a MUST in the European Economic Area (EEA). The use of the standards is not mandatory but has a decisive advantage: If standards are used which are published in the Official Journal of the European Communities for compliance to the Machinery Directive or compliance to national standards derived from the directive, an automatic presumption of conformity is assumed.
If an accident in the workplace with personal injuries occurs, it is assumed that the operator or machine manufacturer has fulfilled all machine safety-related demands.

Use of the European standards (EN standards) is imperative in order to implement the Machinery Directive.

The EN standards "Safety for machines" are subdivided into three main groups:

Type A: Basic standards
Defines requirements which apply to all machine types and are basic safety requirements.

Type B: Group standards
These aspects apply to different machine groups.They deal with design aspects such as distances, surface temperatures, ... or functional aspects such as Emergency-stop, two-hand control, ...

Type C: Product standards
are “product standards” that stipulate specific requirements placed on individual machine types. The type C standard enables the safety of the machines to be tested and certified.

The product standard for the respective machine type must be observed first of all. If the requirements of the relevant C standard are different, the C standard shall apply.