I’ve used a fair amount of construction machinery and always wondered if there’s an optimal way/strategy for the placemt of amber warning lights.
Anyone know of like a handbook about lighting of machinery?
Like a “best practices” type thing? In the US, Federal Regulations cover lighting requirements on passenger car and commercial trucks. FMVSS 108. If your machinery is ever driven on the road they most likely have lights according to this regulation.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-571/subpart-B/section-571.108
There should be a section near the top that covers “incorporated by reference”, where they list all the industry standards referenced. A lot of those are available on archive.org. That’s probably as close to a “best practices” as you’re going to find.
Search by images for FMVSS 108 and you’ll find various diagrams showing light location requirements.
NTEA publishes some information about lighting, but I don’t know if you have to be a member to get it.
If you’re talking about flashing beacons, that’s not covered federally, and each state usually just says what color the flashers can or can’t be (blue reserved for police, red for emergency vehicles, green for snow plows, etc.)
If you have a more specific question, I might be able to answer.
I’m thinking of the beacons. I’m from Europe, and all working machinery, working in public spaces has to have amber flashing beacon lights.
Say I have a steam roller. Is if I mount 100 flashing beacons on it, It might make it hard to judge how my roller is moving to other people. Is there some general rules (not laws necessarily) about how many, placement, flashing patters and brightness?
Ah i think you’d wanna search for human factors info on beacons. Ive got this book called human factors design handbook 2nd edition, and has chapters on lighting , visual displays, labels on controls, etc.
One of the sections recommends for industrial illumination to refer to IES lighting handbook and the MIL-STD-1472 and NASA-STD-3000 but those are all for US.
Oooooo I’ve been meaning to find me a book like that on human factors. Can you share the ISBN number?
Seems to list 2:
ISBN 978-0-07-071768-8
ISBN 0-07-071768-0
Wonderful! Thank you very much
On the outside? There’s almost certainly a standard for your country and industry. For example, https://www.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-02/RMS-45070588-Flashing-lights-and-sirens--Vehicle-Standards-Information-No-4.1-February-200.pdf
I’ve figured there must be one. But I have no clue on how to figure out what that standard is called
Dunno man, sorry. I haven’t worked in construction sites for more than 30 years, I wouldn’t know where to look either.
I’d refer to the beacons manufactures, like the other day for work i was browsing ECCOs site and they had info on how to mount them for cars (i was mounting mine to a machine so i didn’t read that part)
To be clear, this is about exterior mounted warning lights, and not like a caution lamp on a control panel, right?
Yes I’m thinking about the external lights that are ment to warn other people of danger
Cars can’t even *decide to put the window controls in a standard place.
