BANNER Engineering, represented in Australia by Micromax , has released new features for the Ez-Screen safety light screen. The additions include fixed blanking to accommodate materials and tooling inflow with no reduction of operator safety. A cascading option has also been released for connecting up to four Ez-Screen pairs and multiple ac interfaces.
Fixed blanking allows for stationary objects such as tooling or materials inflow to be ignored when positioned in a defined set of beams. If the objects are removed, the system goes into a lockout mode to ensure an unsafe gap in the sensing field is not created. Fixed blanking is programmed with onboard DIP switches, making materials or tooling changeovers fast and easy.
The flexible cascading option allows up to four systems of varying sizes, lengths and resolutions to be wired together to form a unified control stop element with a single cable interface. Cascaded system response time is only minimally affected by the addition of each system in the cascade adding a maximum of 2ms to the overall response time for each pair. A response time can also be calculated for each individual system pair. E-stop buttons, safety switches and safety module output contacts can also be interfaced at the end receiver to provide even greater flexibility in the machine safeguarding solution.
The Ez-Screen is intended for point-of-operation machine guarding applications. It is also capable of area guarding when mounted horizontally and long-range perimeter guarding when combined with corner mirrors. Ez-Screen pairs are available in 14mm and 30mm resolution and 12 lengths from 150mm to 1800mm. Ez-Screen grid and point systems are also available offering single beam point, two, three or four-beam grid protection.
A range of mounting brackets, stands and mirrors are available any mounting configuration. Typical applications include small assembly equipment, pick and place machines, moulding presses, packaging machinery, palletisers, roll formers, automated production equipment, robotic work cells and power press applications.