4 Reasons to Install Perspex Machine Guards in Your Factory
If you want to install guards around some of your machines, then you need to think about which material to use. While glass might seem an attractive solution, perspex gives you more all-round benefits.
What are the advantages of using perspex machine guards?
1. Better Visibility
You need to see clearly through your machine guards. You can't check how a machine operates if you can't see it in detail.
Perspex edges glass out slightly in visibility terms. You get the same clarity; however, perspex lets through more light than glass.
Perspex also stays clear even in thicker sheets. Thicker glass guards might look a little cloudy. You might not get a crystal clear view through them. Thick perspex stays clear.
2. Increased Strength
Perspex is stronger than glass. It can take heavy knocks and bumps without breaking.
Even if you use toughened glass, you have no guarantees that a guard will stay intact if it is hit or knocked over. While perspex guards might scratch or crack under extreme pressure, they usually won't break and will remain usable. Once a glass guard is damaged, you're probably going to have to replace it.
3. Increased Safety
If a glass guard breaks, then your employees could get injured. Even if you use safety glass that breaks in safer and blunter pieces, someone could still cut themselves. Plus, if glass flies into a machine, it could cause some damage. You'll have to shut the machine down to find and remove all the glass. You might have to make repairs.
If a perspex guard is damaged enough to break, it still typically holds itself together. It doesn't shatter in the same way as glass. So, you won't have the same safety or equipment concerns.
4. Lighter Weight
Glass guards are heavier than perspex products. This extra weight might put stress on a machine if the guard mounts directly on it.
A free-standing glass guard is also harder to move because it's heavy. Your machine operators might struggle to move their guards when they need to get close to their machines.
In some cases, they might not keep themselves safe if they try to squeeze around a guard that they can't move easily. They might not get enough clear working room.
Perspex guards are a lot lighter. They don't add much weight to a surface, and they are easy to move.
To see some examples of these guards or to talk about custom solutions, talk to perspex suppliers.