In a mine, equipment is rebuilt, moved and reassembled at a rate few other industries match. Every one of those rebuilds is an occasion on which the question of substantial modification can arise, and it is usually asked by somebody other than the person who did the rebuild.
What keeps coming up in the mining industry
- Fixed and mobile equipment in the same installation, with different rules meeting in the same risk assessment.
- Rebuilding and relocating equipment between levels and sites, and what follows it in the documentation.
- Equipment built in your own workshop — common, and always a manufacturer question.
- Assemblies: crushing, screening and conveying that together become one machine.
- Remote control and automation, where the safety functions sit in the control system rather than in a fence.
Your own workshop makes you a manufacturer
Equipment built in your own workshop and put into service in your own installation is covered too. That it is never sold on does not change the requirements for risk assessment, documentation and a declaration.
Questions from the mining industry
- Does the Machinery Regulation apply to equipment we only use ourselves?
- Yes. Putting into service is covered in the same way as placing on the market. If you build something yourselves for your own use, you are its manufacturer.
- We are moving a crusher to another site. Does anything have to be redone?
- A straight relocation is normally not a modification. But if it is rebuilt, added to or connected to other equipment at the new site, the assessment can change — and then it is the connecting up that raises the question.
The course for the mining industry
The rules with the mine's own examples: rebuilds, in-house manufacture and assemblies of machinery.
See the courses