Technical articles, news and publications on CE marking

DGUV, the German Social Accident Insurance Institutions, explain the special features and potential hazards of protective screens on machine tools. Background information and a link to this publication can be found in our brief overview.

On 2023-11-21, a conference on the new Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 organised by IBF and Swissmem, the Swiss industry association for the mechanical, electrical and metal industries, took place in Zurich. In our brief overview you will find some impressions and a review of the event.

EN ISO 13849-1:2023 is the new standard for safety-related parts of control systems. To help you transition to the new requirements of the standard, we have compiled some tips in an article. These include, for example, a free assignment table for the standard sections, available additional products for the standard and the new functionality from Annex A (assistance in determining parameter P) in Safexpert.

On 2023-07-02, the Act for Better Protection of Persons Providing Information (Whistleblower Protection Act - HinSchG) came into force. In a technical article written for us, Dr. Gerhard Wiebe has analyzed the law with regard to machine law.

What are the concrete requirements of the future Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)? The Technical Guideline TR-03183 already communicates which cybersecurity requirements manufacturers and products will have to meet.

Must access to harmonised standards in the EU Official Journal be free of charge? The European Court of Justice (ECJ) answered this question in the negative in July 2021, citing intellectual property protection. The plaintiffs subsequently appealed against the ruling and are likely to be proven right: according to the Advocate General, harmonised standards must be accessible free of charge due to their legally binding nature! This so-called opinion is not yet final, but a new judgment of the ECJ in favour of the plaintiffs could be handed down.

In a short article, we have summarized key data on this standardization project and show how you can submit a statement or amendment proposals in an unbureaucratic manner. In addition, we have prepared the contents of the draft in a user-friendly way in the new Safexpert Knowledge Base, so that you as a user of the Safexpert StandardsManager can already get an idea of the changes:

As of Safexpert 9.0, the software offers the function "Document comparison", which can answer the questions raised with a few mouse clicks. Details on this new function, explained on the basis of the new EN IEC 62061, can be found in our brief information.

With Service Pack 1 for Safexpert 9.0 comes an interface to the TIA Selection Tool (TIA ST) from Siemens. This interface was developed in a cooperation between Siemens and IBF. With the "Safety Evaluation" function in the TIA Selection Tool, the achieved Performance Level (PL) according to ISO 13849-1 or the achieved Safety Integrity Level (SIL) according to IEC 62061 can be calculated for a safety function.

The bundled inclusion of standard data in the EU Official Journal results not only in new publications but also in central dates for the end of the transition period. In our overview, we have clearly arranged the key dates of the so-called DOC (=Date of Cessation) for the standard data in the EU Official Journal according to the Machinery, Low-Voltage, EMC, Pressure Equipment, ATEX and Radio Equipment Directives in a timeline.