April 2007

Compact, refined and safe: the Safe400 safety light curtain with 100 mm module length

Landquart; Teca-Print Ibérica SA is the Spanish subsidiary of the pad printing machine manufacturer Teca-Print, whose headquarters are in Thayingen in Switzerland. For one customer, who imprints small plastic parts, the imprinting area on a rotary indexing machine needed to be safeguarded. After imprinting, the parts are removed from the holder by a mechanical device. The operator is able to manually rectify jamming of this automatic removal device. The operator has access to the removal device via a small opening in the separating wall between the imprinting and removal area. To ensure that the operator is not at risk in such a situation, Teca-Print implemented the Safe400 light curtain with a module length of 100 mm. If a finger or respectively the hand of the operator interrupts the light curtain, movement of the rotary indexing table is immediately stopped.

Due to the compactness of the Safe400, no mechanical adjustments were needed for the installation of the light curtain emitter and receiver. The equipment was back in operation in no time at all. The SafeCIS3 safety controller carries out the combined monitoring of the light curtain as well as the emergency stop button. Due to a width of just 22.5 mm, the controller can be easily installed in machines where space is limited.