Machinery directive 2006-42-CE

The new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC will be mandatorily applied as from December 29,2009, the date at which it will effectively replace the current Directive 98/37/EC.

As from the publication of this text in June 2006, the European industrial valve manufacturers, aggregated within the CEIR (European Committee of Valve Industries) and Profluid in France, anticipated its application to their equipment.

It appears that no valve (with or without its actuator) is a machine in the sense of Directive 2006/42/EC. Only actuated valves explicitly intended to be integrated in such a machine, can be considered as "Partly Completed Machine" (PCM) and this in order to provide the manufacturer of the latter with all the elements required for its risk analysis.

The European industrial valve manufacturers called on Cetim's expertise in operation safety in order to help them establish typical risk analyses for equipment likely to be PCMs.

This is precisely the objective of this report which, after a brief reminder of the regulation, outlines these risk analyses. It is evident that the latter may not be used as-is and must be adapted for each manufacturer based on its own solutions.