Operator presence in the risk zone of a stamping press — automatic cycle inhibit without losing rhythm.

The problem

The press accident almost never arrives with the curtain armed.

Modern stamping has the functional safety layer properly built — light curtain, two-hand control, emergency stop, EN ISO 13849 certification. And even so, when somebody reviews the lost-time incident reports in a stamping shop, nearly all of them share the same script:

1. Die change. The die setter steps into the enclosure with the curtain muted in setup mode — because there is no other way to do the job. When he finishes and steps out, somebody starts the cycle believing nobody is inside any more. The operator does not always get to tell the story, because he does not always get to tell it.
2. Strip or coil jam. The feeder jams, the operator leans into the enclosure to clear it. The curtain reads "all clear" the instant the hand leaves the beam, but the hand comes back before the reset closes. Milliseconds for the cycle to catch what it never should.
3. A colleague walking behind. The hazardous envelope of a press is not only the front enclosure. Large presses have a pit, a coil-feed side and a rear area where people pass through for non-production reasons.

Each of those scripts is a gap the approved light curtain cannot see. Each one is defensible before an inspection if it is documented — and a human and financial disaster if it happens undocumented. The EHS manager knows this; what he did not have until now was a way to see human presence inside the enclosure continuously without wearing the team down with a hundred extra procedures.

How it fits into the IRIS system

iLEAN does not replace the curtain — it adds the human presence layer that was missing inside the enclosure.

The problem of presence in the risk zone is not a lack of functional safety: it is a lack of continuous vision of the inside of the enclosure. The certified functional safety layer (light curtain, two-hand control, emergency stop, certified bus) is in place and is not touched. iLEAN Edge sits on top of it, as the filler that closes the gap the certification itself left exposed.

Edge sees human presence in 3D inside the enclosure, in setup mode too. The agent inhibits cycle start when there is presence and leaves the per-event dossier. The EHS manager gets the traceability back.

The three iLEAN pieces applied to the stamping press:

• Edge — terminal with a 3D camera over the enclosure (front + coil-feed side + rear if the press requires it). The CNN detects human presence through pose estimation, with no facial recognition. It fires an output to the press PLC as a cycle inhibit whenever there is presence in the risk zone. It works with no network.
• Connect — captures the press operating mode (production / setup / maintenance), the scheduled die change from the MES and the work order. And it absorbs what arrives from outside: a new part from the customer, a die modified by the external toolmaker.
• Agent — cross-checks presence, operating mode, cycle and die change plan. It consolidates the dossier per press, per shift and per event, useful for occupational safety compliance, for the insurer, for the safety committee and for training. The policy is defined by a person; the agent applies it with 24/7 consistency.

See the full IRIS architecture →

Before and after

Press with an approved curtain vs. press with iLEAN intelligent presence

Aspect	Curtain + two-hand + e-stop only	With iLEAN Edge + Connect + Agent
Vision of the enclosure	Perimeter (whatever crosses the curtain)	Continuous 3D interior, in setup mode too
Setup mode / die change	Curtain muted, procedure + eyesight	Edge sees presence and inhibits the cycle
Facial recognition	n/a	No — analysis by workstation, not by person
Per-event traceability	Verbal report + EHS logbook	Automatic dossier per press and shift
Conversation with insurer / auditor	What the operator remembers	Workstation data, counted and classified
Certified functional safety	Curtain + two-hand + e-stop	Intact — Edge sits on top of it

Impact estimate

Impact estimate for your plant — to be validated with your numbers.

The block below is an estimate to be validated with the actual data from your shop. We put it forward so the committee has an order of magnitude; we refine it during the diagnostic.

• Stamping shop with 2-6 mechanical or hydraulic presses, frequent die changes, setup mode active several times per shift, historical near-miss reports that can be documented.
• Edge pilot on the Pareto press (3D camera + integration with the press PLC + dossier). First value expected within a few weeks.
• Expected reduction in cycle initiations with presence in the zone of ≥ 30% against the baseline — and the rest, recorded instead of invisible.
• Indicative payback between 4 and 9 months, considering the lever of a single lost-time injury avoided and the cadence recovered in setup mode.
• Hard lever: a single serious accident avoided pays for the system in one go, before cadence even enters the conversation.

And the safety manager's reasonable doubt

"What if the AI mistakes a shadow for a person and stops the press when it shouldn't? And the other way round?" — hallucination is a problem of free generation, not of anchored tasks. In tasks where the AI merely classifies what it sees inside a known enclosure (human presence yes/no per zone), the best models brought the error below 1.5% ^[1]. And even so, nothing critical is decided alone: the certified light curtain and the two-hand control remain active and trigger the stop by themselves if Edge fails. And the other way round: Edge adds a second layer where the first one was muted out of necessity — that is a net safety gain, not a replacement of a certified layer. The three rings are there for exactly this.

^[1] OpenAI paper "Why Language Models Hallucinate", 2025 — on the reliability of AI in anchored tasks.