We help manufacturers every day with the task of CE marking their equipment for shipment to the EU. Very often we are asked questions by our customer’s engineering staff and one of the most common questions pertains to wire colors. The main electrical safety standard for machinery is EN 60204-1 – Electrical equipment of machines – Part 1: General requirements. EN 60204-1 is a B-type Machinery Directive standard and tells machine makers what colors are required for different wires, in clause 13.
However, it can be difficult to interpret, sometimes, exactly what the authors of the standard mean. If you are questioning what it means… it’s not you, it’s the standard. We get asked all the time about this subject.
Yesterday one of our senior safety engineers provided a response to this question for me to forward to a customer. The email he wrote is below for future reference.
F2 Labs is here to help.
Have a question or a comment? We can be contacted via this link. We can be reached by phone at 855-652-7281 and are here to help you.