Safety Light Curtains
Safety Light Curtains
Safety light curtains provide a versatile and efficient safeguarding solution, especially where frequent access to machinery is essential. They create an invisible protective barrier that instantly halts equipment when an object is detected, ensuring operator safety without compromising productivity.
At Safety Systems Technology, we work with customers to understand their operations before designing and installing light curtain systems. We deliver tailored solutions to protect your team, optimise your productivity and ensure full compliance with the latest safety standards, integrating enhanced safety with your workflow.
What are Safety Light Curtains and When are They Appropriate?
Safety light curtains provide an alternative safeguarding solution to fixed or moveable guards when product flow or frequent operator interaction make interlocked access impractical. Safety light curtains create unseen barriers, based on infrared light beams, which when broken by an unrecognised shape or form, can be used to initiate a safe stop of the machinery before the hazard can be accessed. With careful implementation, safety is ensured whilst maintaining productivity.
At Safety Systems Technology, we specialise in the expert design, installation, and validation of safety light curtain systems in a wide range of manufacturing and warehousing environments. We deliver tailored solutions that protect your team, optimise your operations and ensure compliance with safety standards.
All light curtain systems consist of a paired transmitter and receiver mounted across a hazardous area, emitting multiple parallel infrared (IR) beams (invisible to the human eye) between them. These beams create an invisible “curtain”: If even a single beam is interrupted by a person or object (finger, hand or body) (depending on the specified system resolution), the light curtain immediately signals the machine to stop.
Safety light curtains differ from fixed guards or gates because they allow fast and frequent access while still protecting operators. For example, workers can load and unload pallets onto conveyors using a forklift through a light curtain without needing to open a door. This flexibility is ideal where other guarding solutions would slow operations. Light curtains stop a machine the instant an unexpected intrusion occurs and faster than human reaction time.
Light curtain systems require little maintenance and in most cases have a longer product lifetime than other types of guarding.
Types of Protection
Light curtains create an invisible protective field that safeguards the hazardous area and can be used in a number of scenarios.
Access Protection
For example when used to prevent access into palletising or wrapping machinery, light curtains are positioned on the entry and exit points of the machinery to detect persons who may attempt to access the machinery via the conveyor openings. Using muting arrangements, automatic material movements can be allowed to pass through the light curtains unhindered, but a person or body part can be detected and the machinery stopped.
Hazardous Point Protection
For example when an operator is inserting or removing workpieces from a press, fingers or hands must be detected. Whilst ever the device beams are broken, no reset of the safety circuit is possible and all dangerous movements remain inhibited.
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Technology, How Light Curtains Work and Classifications
A safety light curtain’s transmitter projects an array of multiple infrared beams to the receiver, forming a two-dimensional protective field. The spacing of these beams is known as the resolution and determines the minimum object size that will be detected. Smaller beam spacing (e.g. 14 mm) catches tiny intrusions like fingers, whereas wider multibeam sensors with spacing (up to 500 mm) is used for full-body or access protection. When an infrared beam is broken, the light curtain and machine safety related control system stops the machine’s hazardous motion providing safeguarding without physical barriers.
Light curtains are categorised as Type 2 and Type 4 by IEC 61496. Type 2 devices offer basic protection with single processors and require regular manual testing. Type 4 devices use dual redundant processors with continuous self‑diagnostics, providing higher fault tolerance and reliability for high‑risk machinery where maximum safety integrity is required.
SST installs light curtains that provide robust and compliant protection whilst maintaining productivity. In the tabs below we briefly explain how features such as blanking and muting can be configured to maintain high levels of safety whilst maximising throughput. We also explain detection and resolution tolerances according to body part.
Blanking creates precise, permanent gaps in the detection field to admit objects such as material feeders, supports or certain components being processed without triggering a stop. Fixed blanking isolates a small number of predefined beams for consistent in‑feed paths, while floating blanking temporarily ignores a small number of beams anywhere in the field, accommodating irregular product dimensions or variable feed positions.
Muting manages safety and workflow by briefly suspending the light curtain’s protective function during a controlled sequence. This generally involves additional sensors on the approach to the light curtain. In automated palletising or load/unload systems for example, muting sensors distinguish by either position or sequence product movement from human intrusion.
Safety light curtains come in different beam spacings (resolutions) matched to the body part needing protection. Smaller spacing (e.g. 14 mm) detects fingers, while wider spacing (up to 500 mm) covers limbs or full‑body entry.
Higher‑resolution curtains are used close to the hazard for point‑of‑operation guarding, while lower‑resolution “body detection” curtains or light grids cover larger zones and are positioned further away.
SST can advise on the correct resolution and positioning of light curtains to meet the application requirements. In some cases such as machinery with run down times, light curtains may not be suitable.
Applications and Industries
Safety light curtains can provide fast, flexible access while maintaining safety. They are widely used on assembly equipment and presses (guarding tooling, punches and forming machines), robotic work cells, and material handling lines such as conveyors, palletisers and pick‑and‑place systems.
Typical uses include finger or hand protection on presses, saws and CNC machines to prevent amputations, and limb or body protection on packaging lines, warehouses and logistics systems. Light curtains can also be used to safeguard forklift interaction points, conveyor inlets and pallet pick stations.
Light curtains are widely deployed across a wide range of industries such as aerospace and defence manufacturing, food and beverage and pharmaceutical plants, recycling and waste processing, steel and metal fabrication, engineering workshops, and packaging/warehousing. When correctly specified, they offer effective and compliant machine safeguarding that ensures safety without compromising productivity.
Need to find out about safety light curtains for your company?
Please contact us for a no-obligation consultation. We will review your machinery, risk assessment and production needs, and recommend the right safety light curtain solution.
Protect your workforce and keep your operations running smoothly and get in touch with Safety Systems Technology today.
Review, Design and Installation
Safety Systems Technology begins by reviewing your machinery, operator workflows and risk assessments to understand processes and how the equipment is used. We then design a bespoke system using products from leading suppliers to suit the application and environment. Drawing on decades of experience, our engineers perform on‑site stop‑time testing to calculate the precise mounting height, distance and orientation needed to ensure that the light curtain halts the machine before any body part can reach the hazard, in line with EN ISO 13855:2024.
When reviewing existing light curtain installations we frequently find systems incorrectly installed. Even if the device itself is of good quality, inadequate positioning can render it ineffective and unsafe. This is why we recommend regular testing and inspection of light.
Compliance
Our customers expect the highest levels of compliance. All our installations comply with current standards and use only high quality UKCA/CE‑marked components from leading manufacturers.
Safety light curtains are electro‑sensitive protective equipment governed by EN ISO 13855:2024, which defines the required positioning of safeguards with respect to the approach of the human body including minimum safety distances based on approach speed and reaction stop‑time calculations.
For demanding environments, we can specify ATEX‑rated models for explosive atmospheres and IP69K‑rated enclosures for dust‑tight, high‑pressure wash‑down protection, ensuring reliable, safeguarding under any conditions.
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