Sound generated in the industrial environment is always a concern for manufacturing firms. Any time machinery is moved within a facility or new machinery is added, the contribution of the sound generated by that machine "adds" to the already existing overall "noise" level in the plant. It's important to be able to predict what the new noise level will be in order to know what measures might be necessary to take should the overall level exceed the prescribed thresholds - whether thay be company design guides or occupational exposure limits.
This afternoon, we will introduce a new, still under development, technical report by the ANSI B11 machine tool safety standards Accredited Standards Committee (ASC). ANSI B11-TR5 was commissioned in 2003 by the B11 ASC. It is currently titled, Sound Level Measurement Guidelines, A guide for measuring, evaluating and documenting sound levels emitted by machine, but because it is still being drafted, that title is subject to change. It will be a document written for the manufacturer and user of industrial equipment. This presentation will provide a summary of the information and recommendations for the instrumentation, testing and record keeping prescribed in this technical report.
This ANSI Technical Report on Sound Level Measurement Guidelines was developed to provide useful and practical guidance to the supplier and user of machines to accurately assess the sound level(s) generated by machines or machine production systems. Publication of ANSI Technical Reports is approved by the Accredited Standards Developer for a particular family of ANSI standards. In the case of TR5, the standard developer is AMT, The Association For Manufacturing Technology. The document becomes registered as a Technical Report by the American National Standards Institute. The document is not an American National Standard and the material contained in it is informative, not normative in nature.
It had previously been established that excessive noise exposures can, in some cases, result in a loss of hearing. These findings resulted in the adoption of Federal regulations which specifically established occupational and environmental sound level exposure limits. Therefore, reducing the amount of sound generated by machine tools has become another important design parameter for the machine supplier. To achieve that objective, it became apparent that all of the materially affected and interested parties (machine builders, component manufacturers, end-users, consultants etc.) involved must communicate effectively, using the same terms and procedures.
To that end, the National Machine Tool Builders Association (now AMT, The Association For Manufacturing Technology) established a committee in 1969 representing the interested parties and assigned it the task of preparing an industry standard which would delineate suggested measuring techniques and procedures for the determination of sound emanating from machine tools.
