The New Standard for Manufacturing Can Help Ensure that Your Customers and Employees Stay Safe
The ANSI Z136.9 Safe Use of Lasers in Manufacturing Environments standard is the latest in the line of laser safety guidelines stemming from the parent ANSI Z136.1 standard. LIA plans to have it available for purchase to coincide with the third annual Lasers for Manufacturing Event® (LME®) Sept. 11-12 in Schaumburg, IL.
This standard provides reasonable and adequate guidance for the safe use of lasers and laser systems that operate at wavelengths between 180 nm and 1 mm. Intended to protect individuals with the potential for laser exposure when lasers are used in manufacturing environments, this standard includes policies and procedures to ensure laser safety in these areas where lasers are used in manufacturing, both public and private industries, and product development and testing settings.
Development of the Z136.9 standard has been a study in collaboration and front-line input.
“We brought in an awful lot of people from industry to get involved,” says Tom Lieb, chair of the Z136.9 development subcommittee and president of L·A·I International in Elk Grove, CA. “Especially in the early drafting, we had people from laser companies and using companies participate. I had a very large list of people who participated in the early meetings.”
Until now, the parent standard has been “almost like the Bible” when it comes to regulating differences of opinion regarding interpretations of laser safety on the manufacturing floor, says subcommittee vice chair Randy Paura. “Our original mandate was to try to simplify things. Manufacturers want to err on the safe side. We said, ‘OK in that case we can simplify a lot if we went with point-source exposures only,’ which made it easy for the end user to do calculations. We explain that if you want to do extended source (calculations), go to Dot 1, but you will be on the safe side using point source. I’ve been in touch with a lot of customers who have been very receptive to that concept.”
Using point sources only “simplifies for the average manufacturing operation what they need to know in terms of finding out how dangerous — or not dangerous — something is and how to calculate MPEs,” Lieb explains.
The new standard comes at a critical time, as lasers continue to populate more processing lines in the aerospace, automotive, energy, defense and health care industries.
“The advent of really high-powered fiber lasers and the potential for femtosecond and picosecond lasers in actual manufacturing operations has increased the need for safety attention,” Lieb asserts. Fiber lasers have enhanced the growth of an array of applications due to their relatively lower cost, plug-and-play capability and low use of floor space, he says. “They have expanded the marketplace.”
In particular, Lieb notes, the major automotive companies have raised the bar on safety consciousness in the past five years. They have “put protocols in place that demonstrate their awareness of safety concerns for lasers in the workplace and put requirements on their suppliers that heretofore hadn’t existed.”
About LIA
LIA, the recognized industry leader in laser advocacy and safety education since 1968, serves as secretariat and publisher of the Z136 series of laser safety standards, providing financial and administrative support to the committee. To order the ANSI Z136.9 standard ($150 for LIA members, $170 for non-members), visit www.lia.org/ANSI or call LIA at 1.800.34.LASER.
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