Technology

Machine Guarding, Access & Equipment Safety Modifications

Industrial equipment often needs guarding, fencing, bollards, platforms, enclosures or field-built access around the machine itself. Steel Square can fabricate and install equipment-related modifications that support access, protection and the physical needs of the system.

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The problem

Guarding, Access & Fit Problems

  • Guarding or fencing has to fit an existing machine
  • A platform or access point needs to be fabricated
  • Bollards or enclosures are needed around equipment
  • Structures need weld repair or field modification

What it is

About Machine Guarding, Safety & Access

This covers the fabricated guarding, fencing, platforms, bollards, enclosures and access modifications built around equipment. It protects people and equipment and provides safe access. Off-the-shelf guarding often does not fit the machine or the floor, so it gets fabricated to suit.

  • Guarding and fencing
  • Platforms and access
  • Bollards and enclosures

Two Jobs, Often Confused

Guarding keeps people out of moving equipment. Protection keeps equipment safe from the traffic around it. They use similar hardware and solve opposite problems.

Guarding covers fixed fencing, barriers, machine enclosures and interlocked access points. Protection covers bollards and guard rail shielding racking, control panels, conveyor supports and building structure from forklifts. Access covers the platforms, stairs and handrails that give a technician a safe place to stand on a machine that was not designed with one.

Guarding & Access Around the Machine

Guarding, fencing, bollards, platforms and enclosures protect people and equipment, and they have to fit the machine and the way the operation moves around it. Steel Square fabricates and installs this work to suit the system it protects, including the field-built access a machine needs.

Why Catalogue Guarding Stops Fitting

A guard package is designed for its machine in isolation, on a clear floor, with nothing else nearby. Buildings are not like that.

It stops fitting the moment a conveyor crosses an aisle, a panel sits where a truck turns, two machines are closer together than the standard package assumes, or a maintenance point needs daily access at height. At that point the guarding gets fabricated to suit, modified on site by somebody without the right tools, or quietly removed. Only the first is a solution, and the third is the one that actually happens.

Guarding That Gets Defeated Is Not Guarding

The most common failure in this discipline is not a guard that breaks. It is a guard that makes the job impossible and gets taken off.

If clearing a jam means removing four bolts, the panel comes off and stays off. If a daily check is behind a fixed section, somebody finds another way in. Guarding designed around how the machine is actually maintained stays where it was put, and that is a design question rather than a compliance one.

Repair & Modification

Existing structures and equipment can also require weld repair, access changes or new protective components as equipment is repaired, relocated or modernized.

Project Experience

At Walgreens Anderson, Steel Square scope includes fencing and bollards. A separate Walgreens Windsor corrective repair included field-built access platforms and weld repair.

FAQ

Buyer FAQ

Can guarding be fabricated to fit an existing machine?

Yes. Steel Square fabricates and installs guarding, fencing, platforms, bollards and access modifications to suit the equipment and the floor around it.

Can Steel Square weld-repair or modify existing structures?

Yes. Steel Square can perform weld repair and modify existing equipment-related structures when a system is repaired, relocated or modernized.

Next step

Talk to Steel Square About Machine Guarding, Safety & Access

Discuss a defined project, or ask for a facility audit for a broader look at the operation.

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