Schmersal develops and produces an extraordinary wide range of high-quality switchgears for the protection of machines and plants in industrial automation and lift industry.
In the "Safe Switching and Monitoring" section, you will find an extraordinary large programme of safety-related switchgears for the position monitoring of guard doors and the non-contact protection of hazardous zones and danger points, as well as safety switching appliances for special applications.
In the "Safe Signal Processing" section, you will find safety relay modules for various safety technology applications (e.g. for emergency stop and guard door monitoring) as well as centralised programmable safety controllers and decentralised field bus systems, e.g. a modular concept for safety functions control on small machines.
In the "Automation Technology" section, you will find switching appliances for the mechanical position detection in various fields of application as well as (safety) sensors with different operating principles; this section furthermore includes a comprehensive programme of command and signalling devices.
The "Ex Switchgear" includes switchgears, which can be used - in accordance with the harmonised standards - in areas with potentially explosive atmospheres due to the presence of gas and dust, e.g. position switches, safety switches and safety sensors with non-contact operating principle.
In the "Lift Switchgears" section, you will find lift switchgears for various applications in the shaft pit, the lift car and the machine room: floor and fine-adjustment switches, positive-break door contacts, position switches, magnetic reed switches, remote alarm systems as well as the USP ultrasonic elevator positioning system.
Flexible, compact, ergonomic: control panels for the safety guard
Current innovations:
The Schmersal Group broadens its service offer with respect to machinery safety. The new “Safety Consulting” service aims at providing the company’s customers with comprehensive consultancy regarding issues such as the implementation of directives and standards in actual constructional practice.
In recent months, experienced engineers from the Wuppertal and Wettenberg plants as well as from multiple European subsidiaries have been qualified as machinery safety experts. They are already on duty in the new Application Center, where they closely collaborate with the local sales engineers and the product management. In other nations, e.g. China and the U.S.A., the consultants will be qualified in September 2010.
The key task of the Safety Consultants will consist in providing the customers with qualified answers to their questions, e.g. which type of safety system must be used, how the safety system must be integrated in the control system and the functionalities of the machine and how the programmable electronic safety system can be configured to optimally meet both the safety requirements and the productivity specifications of the machine.
The assessment of the required Performance Level to EN ISO 13849-1 and the calculation of the actual Performance Level for the selected safety system are two other tasks that the Safety Consultants accomplish for the customers.
The first reactions of the customers onto the new service offer are throughout positive. Uwe Wiemer, Application Center Manager: “Many of our customers want to delegate the configuration of regulation-compliant safety systems to experts, who accept the full responsibility for this assignment. As one of the world market leaders in the safety switchgear business, we have acquired a comprehensive and highly practice-related knowhow in this field. As a result of our collabo-ration and affiliation to different standardisation bodies, we also have the necessary theoretical “background”, which is required for configuring standard-compliant safety guards.”
