When it comes to work place health and safety, there are no compromises or short cuts. Situations often occur where you need to review your machine guards and safety fencing. These reviews sometimes lead to changes being necessary.
The Alusic t-slot aluminium machine guard and safety fencing system is fast, easy, and cost effective when changes or improvements are necessary.
For example, to free up some factory floor space, one of our customers moved a machine closer to another piece of moving equipment. One result of this was that a safety audit had to be undertaken. The final audit required that the guard fence around the relocated machine had to be increased in height.
The simplest, quickest, and most cost effective solution we came up with, was to replace the fence end posts. The new posts had to be tall enough to achieve the required new fence height. Then, new safety fence panels had to be bolted along the top.
We started building the new panels by adding a new rail along the top of each run of the existing fence. This rail would become a common bottom for each of the new panels.
Next, intermediate posts, above the existing intermediate posts had to be fitted on the top of the fence. These were made by cutting up the original fence end posts. It was then simply a matter of fitting them to the new rail, above the existing posts, using clamping plates (084.308.003).
After that, the panels proper were cut to size from 50 x 50 x 3 square galvanised steel mesh. They were then slid into the t-slot framework we had constructed along the top of each fence run. The whole new fence was then finished off with new top rails bolted down to each of the posts.
After working out what was needed, the whole exercise was carried out in only four hours with minimal impact to operations and personnel.
Because we re-used the original fence end posts the materials cost was kept to a minimum. Also, there was no hot work required on site, and therefore no need for hot work permits or the associated paper work involved. On completion of the work there was no requirement for painting or other surface treatment works and hence minimal clean-up costs. These issues together helped minimise time and labour costs.
Most importantly of all, the goal of ensuring a safe environment, from a work place health and safety point of view, was quickly, easily, and economically achieved.
The fact that we could make use of the original fence end posts, and complete all the work in such a short time, is another demonstration of just how versatile and cost effective t-slot aluminium extrusions and accessories are for these types of projects.