This British Standard is the official English language version of EN 62061:2005. It is identical with IEC 62061:2005, incorporating Corrigendum July 2005.
The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee GEL/44, Safety of machinery —Electrotechnical aspects, which has the responsibility to:
— aid enquirers to understand the text;
— present to the responsible international/European committee any enquiries on the interpretation, or proposals for change, and keep the UK interests informed;
— monitor related international and European developments and promulgate them in the UK.
The text of document 44/460/FDIS, future edition 1 of IEC 62061, prepared by IEC TC 44, Safety of machinery - Electrotechnical aspects, was submitted to the IEC-CENELEC parallel vote and was approved by CENELEC as EN 62061 on 2004-12-01.
The following dates were fixed:
– latest date by which the EN has to be implemented at national level by publication of an identical national standard or by endorsement (dop) 2005-11-01
– latest date by which the national standards conflicting with the EN have to be withdrawn (dow) 2007-12-01
This European Standard has been prepared under a mandate given to CENELEC by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association and covers essential requirements of EC Directive 98/37/EC. See Annex ZZ.
The following important information should be noted in relation to the requirements of this standard:
Where the probability of dangerous failure per hour (PFHD) is highly dependent upon proof testing (i.e. tests intended to reveal faults not detected by diagnostic functions) then the proof test interval needs to be shown as realistic and practicable in the context of the expected use of the safety-related electrical control system (SRECS) (e.g. proof test intervals of less than 10 years can be unreasonably short for many machinery applications).
CEN/TC114/WG6 have used a proof test interval (mission time) of 20 years to support the estimation of mean time to dangerous failure (MTTFD) for the realization of designated architectures in Annex B of prEN ISO 13849-1. Therefore, it is recommended that SRECS designers endeavour to use a 20 year proof test interval.
It is acknowledged that some subsystems and/or subsystem elements (e.g. lectro-mechanical components with high duty cycles) will require replacement within the SRECS proof test interval.
Proof testing involves detailed and comprehensive checks that can, in practice, only be performed when the SRECS and/or its subsystems has been designed to facilitate proof testing (e.g. dedicated test ports) and provided with necessary information (e.g. proof test instructions).
To ensure the validity of the proof test interval specified by the designer it is important that any other necessary designated tests (e.g. functional tests) are also successfully performed at the SRECS.
This International Standard specifies requirements and makes recommendations for the design, integration and validation of safety-related electrical, electronic and programmable electronic control systems (SRECS) for machines (see Notes 1 and 2). It is applicable to control systems used, either singly or in combination, to carry out safety-related control functions on machines that are not portable by hand while working, including a group of machines working together in a co-ordinated manner.
