There’s a new 2014 Edition for the CSA Z434, “Industrial Robots and Robot Systems – General Safety Requirements,” and it’s available now from Document Center Inc. The release of this new update means that three important safety standards for robotics are now “harmonized.” They are the CSA Z434, the RIA R15.06, and the ISO 10218 series. While there may be some national differences, the documents are now based on the same information.
What does this mean? Let’s take a look at the recent changes for all three standards. First, the RIA R15.06 has been published since 1986. It was the basis of the two parts of the ISO 10218 series: ISO 10218-1, “Robots and robotic devices – Safety requirements for industrial robots – Part 1: Robots,” from 2006 and ISO 10218-2, “Robots and robotic devices – Safety requirements for industrial robots – Part 2: Robot systems and integration,” from 2011. You’ll notice that the R15.06 material was split into two sections, probably to ease the development of the documents at the international level. The RIA R15.06 was last updated in 2012, this time as the U.S. national adoption of the ISO standards.
Now with the RIA R15.06 in use in the U.S. and the ISO 10218 series adopted by the European Union, Canada was ready to update it’s robotics safety standard as well. The new CSA Z434 is the Canadian national adoption of the ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2, but with national differences.
What does this mean for manufacturers and users of industrial robots and robot systems? If you have facilities or sell to a variety of jurisdictions, it will be much easier for you to integrate the information from these three standards. Since they are all based on consistent information and format, you’ll be able to spot national differences quickly.
So often we speak about harmonization of standards. Here is a clear example of an industry that has made great efforts to develop a standard that can be used on a global basis. With this success, we can expect additional areas of robotics to be addressed in upcoming standards updates.
And if you need a copy of any of the standards mentioned in this posting, please head to the Document Center webstore at www.document-center.com. Here you’ll find over 1,000,000 standards revisions available for ordering. Many can be purchased in both paper format and for pdf download. And our Standards Online subscription service can provide multi-user access as well. Just contact our staff by phone (650-591-7600), fax (650-591-7617) or email (info@document-center.com) for more information. Make us your Standards Experts!
