New Emergency Stop Buttons Support Flexible Safety Concepts

According to Pilz, Safety Pitestop Active brings advantages for plants and machine parks in which plant parts are moved: The machine parts should be able to be safely activated or deactivated according to ISO 13850. In combination with the control systems PNOZ Multi from Pilz, which already support the modular construction of systems, flexible safety concepts should be easy to implement. Pitestop Active is available in different versions for installation and installation on the machine: the installation version with protection class IP65 and the installation version with M12 connection.

Accelerated change of operating mode

According to the manufacturer, Pitestop Active can be activated electrically and is integrated in the safety circuit. In addition, the emergency stop no longer has to be manually deactivated. Likewise, mobile control panels would no longer have to be kept safe, but simply switched to inactive, which increases security. The machine park with Pitestop Active can also be designed more flexibly and the operating mode can be changed more quickly with linked machines: from semi-automatic operation with many individual modules to fully automatic operation, in which every emergency stop affects the entire chain.

According to Pilz, system modules could be switched off or on: Inactive machine parts could be switched off in a cost and energy saving manner - without the additional cover of inactive emergency stop buttons. In addition, quick and unambiguous assignment is possible in an emergency, since after operating Pitestop Active this status is indicated by permanent flashing. This speeds up the recommissioning of the machines and systems and thus increases their availability.

Meets the requirements of the Machinery Directive

Pitestop Active fulfills the requirements of the revised ISO 13850 standard, according to Pilz: The machine directive places particularly high demands on the clear recognition and availability of the emergency stop button on a machine. So far, an inactive emergency stop would have had to be covered to avoid confusion in the event of a hazard. In practice, this was sometimes difficult to implement. The revised ISO 13850 now offers new design options. This standard now defines for the first time that a third state "inactive" is also defined for emergency stop buttons. The safely monitored lighting with the emergency stop button now enables safe activation, says Pilz. (jv)