Machinery directive 2006-42-CE : impact for valves

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.