Light curtains come under optoelectronic devices that are utilized to defend personnel in the proximity of moving machinery that can cause harm like winders, palletizers, and winders. Light curtains can be utilized as an alternative to traditional machine guarding and other mechanical barriers. By decreasing the requirement for physical barriers and guards, these safety light curtains can uplift the practicality of the hardware they are guarding. It should also be noted that by the use of light curtains the efficiency and the operability of the machinery can be improved.
Description
Light curtains can be categorized under those gadgets that are known as Presence Detection devices. Other popular Presence Detection devices include laser scanners and pressure-sensitive safety mats. Most significant uses of safety relays are in industries that work upon robotic cell setup.
Light curtains come with a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter makes a projection of several parallel light beams in an array to the receiver. The receiver contains photoelectric cells that can easily absorb these array of light beams. Whenever an object is seen breaking one or more beams, the guarded equipment is notified with a signal to stop.
The beam of light produced from the transmitter is sequenced, in a steady progression, and is pulsed at a particular recurrence. The receiver is optimized to accept only a specific frequency and pulse from its respective transmitter. This helps in rejecting infrared light that is spurious and in this way improves their reasonableness as segments inside a security framework.
Generally, it is seen that a safety relay is connected with these light curtains that help in nullifying motive power from the hazard. Safety relays can be given muting usefulness which empowers the brief disabling of the security capacity to enable articles to go through the light curtains without stumbling the safety relay. This is especially valuable for hardware which has a few Semi-Automatic processes.
Applications of Safety Light Curtains: Point of Operation Vs Perimeter
Industrial facilities and manufacturers utilize light curtains for safety in 2 general situations i.e. Point of Operation & Perimeter. Let's discuss them in brief.
In this case, the individual positions the light curtains at the point of material handling, let's say under a hydraulic press. It is done with an only intention to make sure that nobody enters the danger area while the machine is being operated.
Conversely, perimeter guards allude to depicting an entire working space or room, let's say for robotic arms. It makes sure that no object or person comes in the boundary of the movement of the machine.
Advantages of Safety Light Curtain
Light curtains provide several advantages over physical barriers, such as.
- It's quite easy to access machine guarded by safety light curtain rather by a physical barrier.
- To perform semi-automatic processes and routine maintenance can be done efficiently.
Hope you liked the above article on safety light curtains. Brands that manufacture them are Panasonic, Omron, and Honeywell. Make sure to follow them using the links as provided.
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