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We have been involved in the design, manufacturing and CE marking of various types of presses for a number of years. Obviously, the machine needs to be CE marked before placing on the market of releasing for use. Then, the question appears: does it conform to the Essential Health and Safety Requirements and can it be CE marked?

To appraise the conformity of presses (machines in general) it is very useful to refer to the harmonized standards. Although, the harmonized standards are not essential for use (for design and production) it is a clear and undoubted way of proof of the conformity.

Which standards should be used for presses?

Until 2019 the standards applicable for presses depending on how they were driven, mechanical, Hydraulic and pneumatic were:

• EN 692:2005 +A1:2009 for Mechanical Presses
• EN 693:2001 +A2:2011 for Hydraulic Presses
• EN 13736:2003 +A1:2009 for Pneumatic Presses.

However, in 2019 they were all superseded by EN ISO 16092-1:2018 which covers all mechanical, hydraulic and pneumatic presses but the list of harmonized standards for the Machinery Directive (MD) only refers to the part 1 (General safety) and part 3 (for hydraulic presses) while older standards: EN 692, EN 693 and EN 13736 are still referred to in the harmonized standards list. Also, it can be found that ISO 16092-2 (mechanical presses), and ISO 16092-4 (pneumatic presses) are not referred to on the harmonized standards list and they are all detailed product standards.

Due to the above the question arises which standards should be used to demonstrate the conformity of the press with the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC ?

The following statement can be found in EN ISO 16092-1: “To confer a presumption of conformity with the relevant essential requirements of Directive 2006/42/EC, this standard (providing general/common requirements for a whole machine family) has to be applied together with one of those standards as specified is the scope (providing specific requirements for a particular category of machinery within this family), once this standard is cited in the Official Journal of the European Communities under Directive 2006/42/EC.”

We have reviewed each of the above standards and made summary of the results in tables separately for each type of presses which you can find below:

Summary: for general requirements of mechanical presses EN ISO 16092-1 should be used EN 692:2005 should be used for detailed requirements (till 19/09/2021).

Summary: for general requirements of hydraulic presses EN ISO 16092-1 should be used and there are two detailed standards for them. We can follow any of them to presume conformity with the directive till 19/09/2021. Only EN 16092-3 will be acceptable after this day.

Summary: EN ISO 16092-1 should be used for general requirements of pneumatic presses and EN 13736:2003 should be used for details (till 19/09/2021).

Once your press model has been placed on the market demonstrating conformity to the Essential Heath and Safety requirements of the Directive by applying the relevant harmonized standards you can continue to produce the machine unmodified under the same declaration of conformity as long as no modifications have been made to the original design.

Any later modifications have to be compliant with the current requirements, standards at that time.