European Machinery Directive

New guidelines for the European Machinery Directive

What are the most important changes that have been made in version 2.1?

The revised version 2.1 of the “Guide to application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EU” came into force in the summer of 2017 and offers support for dealing with the machinery directive. A number of paragraphs have been amended to make things clearer.

There are some important amendments in particular which pertain to the sections dealing with “partly completed machines”, the “assembly of machinery” and “safety components”. A completely new section; "Specific Guidance Documents", has been added which deals with special questions covered by the EU machine committee. It is also to be noted that in many places it is pointed out that, if applicable, incomplete machines must bear a CE-marking if this is required by other directives even if the Machinery Directive does not require a CE-marking for incomplete machines.

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When working with machinery, the EU requires adherence to specific safety regulations

In particular we would like to draw attention to the following four updates:

§38 Assembly of machinery:

Information concerning when large plants (e.g. production lines) need one single CE-marking or when they can be considered separately

§39 Assembly of machinery which consists of new and already existing machines:

In order to determine whether the incorporation of a new machine into a plant makes the (new) entire plant liable for a conformity assessment procedure, there is now the explicit requirement for a risk assessment to be carried out. This section also contains information about the possibility of waiving a renewed CE-marking where new risks are present, if the current protective systems are sufficient.

§42 Safety components:

Comprehensive explanations including examples for the definition of safety components.

§46 Partly completed machines:

Here you can find clarification between interchangeable equipment and partly completed machines. An example of partly completed machines is given as industrial robots, as long as they cannot be counted as „stand and function alone robots“. These types of robots would be classified as complete machines. In addition, the lack of protective systems does not automatically lead to a complete machine being classed as a partly completed machine.

Further information

You can get the revised version of the “Guide to application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EU” here

Guide to the application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EG (2.1 Edition, English)

Have you got any questions on the new guidelines?

ELOKON’s experienced team will be happy to help you with any questions you may have on machine safety.

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