There is no transition period between the old and new Directives, so companies building machines or partly-completed machines - and those performing final assembly, importing machinery for use in the European Economic Area or modifying machinery - now have no choice but to comply. In addition, anyone buying safety components, which now includes machine guarding, needs to be aware of the changes, as safety components are now included within the Directive's scope (see also this article: CE marking machine guards - free White Paper ).

There are other significant changes to the scope, plus there are important new requirements relating to partly-completed machinery, conformity assessment, certification, enforcement and fixings for fixed guards (see this article: How to specify fixings for machine guards ).

Procter's free Guide to the New Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC includes an introduction, the background to the new Directive, timescales, a general overview, detailed analysis and insight from industry experts. There is also a section devoted to sources of further information - such as a link to the text for the new Machinery Directive.

New Machinery Directive - the free guide can be downloaded from the Free Machine Safety Guides section of the website or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it