Avoiding impacts

[extracted from L108 "Controlling noise at work" p57-58]

Reduced drop-heights and cushioned impacts reduce noise

Noise generated by impacts, including components falling into chutes, bins and hoppers, and impacts generated by tooling can be considerable. Try to reduce the speed and/or height of falling objects and avoid impacts, or make arrangements to cushion them, eg:

• fit buffers on stops and rubber or plastic surface coatings on chutes, to avoid
• metal-to-metal impacts;
• apply a progressive cutting edge to punch tooling on power presses to reduce
• the impact noise;
• use conveyor systems, designed to prevent the components being transported
• from impacting against each other.

Try to limit or reduce the 'drop heights' of components. For example, components which are produced by pressings and are ejected and then dropped into a collecting bin can cause high noise levels. Reducing the force of the impact can reduce the noise levels.