Press brake safety · CE, EN 12622 and Lazer Safe

01 — The industrial baselineSafety is not an option: it is the condition for CE marking.

Short answer: it depends on the machine, but the regulatory floor is not up for debate. Long answer: a new hydraulic press brake without compliance to EN 12622:2009+A1:2013 cannot be CE marked, and without CE it cannot be sold in the EU. Period. Safety is not a catalogue line you can buy or skip: it is the floor you do not go below.

What changes, above that floor, is the technical choice. PG fits Lazer Safe as standard across the standard range: laser curtain travelling with the ram, CAT 4 / SIL 3 / PL e, TÜV certified. This article explains what the standard requires, how laser guards work compared to traditional photocells, and why we chose this supplier. It is not the mandatory brand by law — it is our defensible technical choice.

02 — The regulatory frameworkMachinery Directive, EN 12622, CAT 4 / SIL 3.

A hydraulic press brake sold in Europe goes through four overlapping levels of standards.

Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC — general framework. Imposes CE marking, declaration of conformity, technical file, risk analysis on the machine manufacturer. Transposed in Italy by Legislative Decree 17/2010. From 20 January 2027 it will be replaced by Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 — PG press brakes are already aligned with the reinforced requirements on interconnection, CNC cybersecurity and safety monitoring.

EN 12622:2009+A1:2013 — Type C standard, specific to hydraulic press brakes. Defines technical safety requirements and protective measures for design, manufacturing, supply. Harmonised with the Machinery Directive: if you comply, you are presumed conformant. It is the industrial baseline.

EN ISO 13849-1 and IEC 61508 / EN 62061 — horizontal standards on safety-related control systems. They define Performance Level (PL a→e), Categories (B/1/2/3/4) and Safety Integrity Level (SIL 1-3). The market reference for industrial press brakes is PL e / SIL 3 / CAT 4, the highest applicable.

IEC 61496 — AOPD Type 4 — standard on optoelectronic protective devices. Type 4 is the highest, the only one recommended for the working area of an industrial press.

Operational conclusion: to sell a new press brake in the EU you need CE, declaration of conformity, technical file, Type 4 safety system of adequate category. No improvisation: EN 12622 compliance is the industrial baseline.

03 — Photocells vs laser scannerTwo technologies, two ergonomics, two cycle times.

Under the umbrella “Type 4 device” live two very different technology families.

Light curtain photocells. Vertical arrays of infrared LEDs, perimeter protected field outside the working area. The operator must move hands away before closing, usually with two-hand control. Mature technology, accepted, still legal. Weak points: two-hand cycles, false positives from dust/smoke/reflections, tool change often requires muting reconfiguration. Mediocre ergonomics.

Optical laser scanner (laser AOPD). Planar laser curtains, transmitter and receiver mounted on the upper beam integral with the ram: the curtain travels with the ram during closing. Protected zone of about 40 mm below the punch tip. Dynamic muting kicks in at the right moment: lower laser disabled on sheet contact, upper laser maintains protection until the bend begins. The operator holds the sheet with hands close to the V die without breaking the cycle.

Production difference: high-speed closing down to a few millimetres from the material (on Sentinel Plus down to 2 mm), no routine two-hand cycles, natural ergonomics, false positives rare thanks to modulated light. On top-tier systems the receiver integrates image processing that distinguishes sheet from obstacle. Cycle time drastically more favourable on repetitive work.

Compliance: the classic photocell typically reaches PL d / SIL 2 / CAT 3; the top-tier laser scanner reaches CAT 4 / PL e / SIL 3 as standard. The photocell remains legal, but on new press brakes in the medium-to-high range the market has been moving to laser muting for about fifteen years.

04 — Our technical choiceWhy Lazer Safe on the standard PG range.

The PG supply chain has always been declared on the product pages. Hydraulics Bosch Rexroth, CNC ESA Automation (Delem or Cybelec on request), tooling Promecam / Wila, laser safety Lazer Safe. We do not sell black boxes: the workshop knows who makes every critical component, and has the third-party certificate in the technical file.

Lazer Safe was founded in 1998 in Perth, Western Australia. Specialised exclusively in press brake safety — a product company vertical on press brakes, not a generalist supplier. Since 3 August 2023 it has been part of Halma plc, FTSE 100 Safety group, which cites it as “world leader” of the press brake safety segment.

The arguments that led us to choose it as standard supplier:

• Press brake verticality. Entire catalogue dedicated. PCSS-A is an embedded safety PLC developed exactly for the controlled closing of a press brake ram — not a generalist controller reconfigured.
• Complete compliance. CAT 4 / PL e / SIL 3 / Type 4 / EN 12622, TÜV Austria, ANSI B11.3-2012 + CSA Z142-10 for North America, NR12 for Brazil, UL Listed file E514131. Only external certificates, no self-declarations.
• Image processing in the receiver. The IRIS Plus family integrates image processing in the laser muting receiver. No external PC. The same camera enables live angle measurement (BendVision) leveraging hardware already mandatory by standard — an option PG offers as a software upgrade.
• Native automation. SmartLink, Lazer Safe’s proprietary protocol, dialogues in real time with the CNC and cell controllers. Tandem DCA configurations with two synchronised stands work with two coordinated PCSS-A instances.

Transparent supply chain, declared leading supplier, third-party certification, native integration with the rest of the CNC chain. It was not the obvious choice: it was the defensible one.

05 — What we fit by rangeDCA, H.DCA, E.DCA, Roofing, Tandem.

Lazer Safe organises the offer in two families: OEM Embedded as standard on new machines, and Retrofit for existing machines (section 06). On the standard PG range the fit varies by machine:

• DCA · Hydraulic — LZS-003-HS or Sentinel Plus for mid sizes; PCSS-A + LZS-LG-HS on large sizes and high cadence. The product page lists in standard equipment “Lazer Safe, MCS, photocells, guards compliant by intended use”.
• H.DCA · Hybrid — PCSS-A + IRIS. The servo-hydraulic transmission accelerates closing: laser muting plus image processing adds value to the typical H.DCA cycle.
• E.DCA · Electric — PCSS-A + IRIS Plus. Very fast electric servo, responsive laser curtain. BendVision is a concrete offer on this machine for those bending repeated series with tight angle tolerances.
• Roofing — Sentinel Plus or LZS-LG-HS. Large panels, thin sheet, fast cycles: the three-plane laser zone of the Sentinel Plus covers the typical segmented tooling.
• Tandem DCA — twin PCSS-A with lateral synchronisation, IRIS Plus on both stands. Safety duplicated coherently with the structure.

To size force, bending length and V die you open the step before with the PG bending force calculator; to configure the entire press brake, safety and tooling included, the seven-step configurator closes the loop.

06 — Safety retrofitA 1990s press brought to 2026 compliance.

Retrofitting just the safety chain is one of the most frequent cases. A well-built industrial hydraulic press brake runs thirty years and more — frame, table, throat, rams, back gauge hold up just fine. It is the electronics — CNC, drives, safety — that have a manufacturer support life of ten-fifteen years. When the original safety system is a legacy photocell out of production or a mat no longer compliant, we intervene with the Lazer Safe retrofit family.

Available systems: Sentinel (CE / TÜV / EN 12622, basic retrofit with machine command monitoring), Sentinel Plus + BendShield (top of range, obstacle detection at 2 mm from any angle, three laser zones, punch auto-alignment), Defender / Defender Plus (dual laser standard, optional dual guarding laser + light curtain), LZS-003-HS (legacy still available as basic retrofit). All Type 4, CAT 4 on the flagships.

The PG intervention follows a defined procedure: preliminary technical assessment, installation by qualified personnel, speed and stopping-performance tests verified periodically by the system itself, re-signing of the EN 12622 + Machinery Directive declaration of conformity in the installer’s name (PG), new CE marking on the complete machine. The technical file includes the TÜV certificates of the Lazer Safe component. On twenty-year retrofit PG declares an added useful life of about +50%.

Fiscal honesty: Italian tax incentives apply to Italian tax residents only. Retrofitting safety alone does not access machine incentives (Iperammortamento 4.0, Sabatini 4.0, ZES, ISI INAIL are reserved for brand-new equipment — the Italian MIMIT FAQ is explicit). It remains an investment capitalisable as improvement on existing capital equipment, evaluated on standalone ROI. More on the third route between used and new in the article used or new press brake; for the parameters of new equipment the 2026 super-deduction. Retrofit quote from the service and retrofit page.

07 — DS shears · different chainNo Lazer Safe on shears: here is why.

A necessary note for anyone arriving from DS guillotine shears. Lazer Safe is designed exclusively for press brakes: a laser curtain that travels with the ram makes sense where there is a ram closing onto a V die. On shears the process is pure cutting — a blade running vertically against a counter-blade — and the safety chain is different.

On DS shears, hydraulic or mechanical, we fit: two-hand control via pedal or push-button, movable guards with interlocked upper cover, Type 4 perimeter photocells on the loading area, gate switches on lateral and rear guards, mushroom E-stop. CE marking and declaration of conformity under Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC as for any machine, without ram laser scanner because there is no ram. DS shears, being pure cutting, do not fall under the Industry 4.0 technical requirements: they remain eligible for ordinary Sabatini, ZES and ISI INAIL in the Italian context.

It is not “less safety” — it is a chain adequate to the process. CE marking, technical file, declaration of conformity: the base rule stays the same. The device changes because the machine changes.

08 — FAQQuick answers to recurring questions.