Those who speak of safety are less and less thinking of just the individual products that make equipment and machines safe. Safety is now a comprehensive concept, as is sensor, control and application competence:
i.e. safetyPLUS - the safety concept from SICK.

>> The world of safety is complex and dynamic: directives and standards interact with one another; technological progress offers new solution approaches; new concepts are created on the basis of new demands which, in turn, can have normative or technological effects. Staying on top of all this, and offering safe system solutions while helping design innovative processes, can only be achieved by those who, like SICK, have offered practical safe sensor and control technology for about 60 years.

Safety means knowing where one is going

Six decades at the cutting edge of safety developments make SICK a competent contact for customers, users, standardisation committees and inspection organisations.

Based on intensive dialogue, SICK offers:

• effective, complete solutions from a single source,
• seamless integration in all open system worlds,
• the most versatile sensor and switch portfolio – worldwide,
• uniform software or configuration and project planning,
• innovative safety control technology,
• the world’s first safety controller with an enclosure rating of IP 67,
• a dense global competence network of application engineers with first-class qualifications,
• worldwide service throughout he entire machine life cycle.

Tomorrow ’s safety is thus called safetyPLUS.

Safe robot cells: greater integration and greater functionality right from the start
safetyPLUS is available to both system integrators and end-customers. Austria’s Roboter-Anlagen-Technik GmbH (rob-an-tec) in Linz exploited safetyPLUS in their latest project. The task was to ensure accident-free working processes during the production of automobile fuel tanks on folding and welding robots at the end-customer Magna Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik AG.The two new robots, neighbouring one another had interlinked processes. “We had already made contact with SICK during the initial planning phase so that we could achieve as efficient a safety solution as possible right from the start,” says Bernhard Eiber, Managing Director “Building on a risk analysis, we worked out and assessed a variety of safety concepts together with SICK.” Because of the technical process conditions, a C4000 safety light curtain proved to be the best solution on the welding robot in addition to another C4000, the cell of the bending robot was equipped with an S3000 safety laser scanner to monitor the internal space.
Furthermore, a variety of working and end positions could be detected in the two cells with the help of non-contact safety switches, and this information passed on and used for controlling the protective equipment.
The flexible UE4400 safety controller system was used to provide effective evaluation of the sensors’ data and for simple conversion of the safety logic. “Together we developed an approach for the integration of all the safety systems in the control technology. The early engineering, programming and advance trials of the complex functions allowed a considerable reduction in the commissioning time at the location near the new Peugeot works in Slovakia’s Trnava. And now the early consideration of sensor and control solutions from SICK has really paid off.”

The project also demonstrates how important a dense international network of competence is, because the servicing work and the plant modifications that can be expected during the plants’ operating lives can be carried out or supported by SICK personnel on-site. “As a result of the early collaboration with SICK as experts in sensors, control systems and services, we can implement an intelligently integrated overall solution whose openness and range of functions now guarantee the end-customers a high level of safety at work, and a high lasting level of investment safety,” Bernhard Eiber sums up. “That is exactly what we mean by safety, and what SICK means."

Those who speak of safety are thinking of the combination of sensor, control and service competence. Safe system solutions from SICK - safetyPLUS for users.