Welding Helmet Safety Standards are key considerations when choosing your welding helmet, safety is always the most critical. There are many attractive styles, colors, and patterns for welding helmets, but if your helmet doesn’t meet the required standards and requirements, you run the danger of being hurt by radiation, sparks, splatters, and other occupational risks.
To make things simpler, we have put up a brief guide to lay out the fundamentals of these standards, which can occasionally be difficult to understand and follow.
Welding Helmet Safety Standards
Although there are many things to take into account, fundamental Welding Helmet Safety Standards are always a good place to start. The most significant standards for welding helmets are EN 175 (standard for protective equipment for the face and eyes against optical radiation and welding risks) and EN 379. (standard for auto-darkening welding filters). You may learn more about EN 166 standards for eye protection and how to choose a welding helmet by reading our blog post on those standards.
EN 175 – Welding Helmet Safety Standard
All personal protective equipment that shields the user’s face and eyes must adhere to EN 175 standards. It guarantees that your helmet will shield you from dangerous optical radiation and other risks that are frequent in welding, cutting, or similar operations. This standard sets forth certain requirements for your welding helmet and guarantees that its construction won’t place you at unjustified risk from radiation, combustible materials, mechanical hazards, or electrical hazards.
As we will discuss below, EN 175-compliant helmets are made to be able to safely include protective welding filters, which are in turn mandated by EN 379. It’s advisable to put the helmet on the shelf if it doesn’t meet EN 175 standards.
EN 379 – Standard For Welding Filters’ Clarity
Welders should pay special attention to EN 379 since it regulates the clarity of your optical filter, which has a significant impact on the caliber of work you can do. Instead of the more conventional passive welding helmets that must be continuously lifted and lowered, this standard is concerned with auto-darkening filters that darken automatically when the welder strikes the arc.
This standard uses a four-part scale with four distinct categories to classify welding filters according to several facets of lens clarity. All of these grades range from 1 to 3, with 1 representing the highest score and 3 the lowest. The highest possible mark for a helmet would be EN 379 – 1 / 1 / 1 / 1, while the lowest possible mark would be EN 379 – 3 / 3 / 3 / 3.
Here, we’ll clarify the four categories in more detail.
1) Optical Class (1/X/X/X/X)
This element, which rates the degree of distortion the lens delivers, could alternatively be referred to as accuracy. Consider how much distortion there would be while seeing through wavy water as opposed to how little there would be via a clear glass window. A minimal amount of distortion would result in a clear image with sharp, precise details, earning a rating of “1.”
2) Class Of Light Diffusion (X/1/X/X)
The emphasis of this section is on what many of us would consider the conventional definition of clarity: whether or not the image is blurry. Cheap glass frequently has impurities that lead to more light diffusion and blur the image, but excellent glass doesn’t and produces a superior, clearer image. Here, a “1” grade would indicate a sharp and uniform image without any blurring or additional light diffusion in particular places.
3) Luminous Transmittance Variation Class (X / X / 1 / X)
This classification focuses on how consistently the auto-darkening feature of the lens performs. Your filter should darken the surface of the lens consistently, with no bright or dark spots in relation to the entire lens. A lens with perfect uniformity and an even distribution of shade throughout would receive a score of 1.
4) Luminous Transmittance Angle Dependence Class (X / X / X / 1)
The final rating on the EN 379 scale is for how clear your filter is when viewed at an angle. When you gaze down, up, or to the side, a poor-quality lens may cause the image you are viewing to be warped, making it appear dark, stretched, blurry, or distorted. No matter what angle you’re looking from, a perfect “1” grade lens would retain a constant shade and image quality.
Additional Factors
The Welding Helmet Safety Standards mentioned above are the most crucial things to check for when choosing your helmet, but there are many more aspects to take into account as well. These include:
Shade Number: Choosing the appropriate shade is essential for comfort while welding, even though any competent welding helmet should block out all damaging UV and infrared light from the welding arc. Depending on the type of welding you do, carefully select your shade because too low or high of a shade can put undue strain on your eyes.
Reaction time: You want the darkening of your helmet to happen as quickly as possible to prevent harm to your eyes. To reduce the chance of harm, your filter must switch faster than 0.5ms (1/2000th of a second) so that the human eye can detect changes in light. Fortunately, the majority of our welding helmets, including the Bollé Fusion+ Welding Helmet FUSV with a reaction time of 0.1ms, comfortably fulfill that standard.
Arc sensors: Auto-darkening welding helmets’ performance is frequently dependent on the number of these sensors they have, thus ideally, you want as many as feasible. While more sophisticated helmets typically have three or four, many basic helmets only have two.
Field of Vision: To perform their job as well as possible, welders must be able to see the object they are working on, so they need a wide field of vision that allows them to see a sizable section of their workpiece. You should absolutely try to avoid having to move your head and neck frequently for long periods of time because doing so might eventually lead to tension and strain.
Weight: It may go without saying, but it’s not fun to wear a heavy or uncomfortable helmet for long periods of time. Try to choose the helmet with the lightest weight to reduce long-term stress and pain and prevent neck fatigue and other injuries.
With 8 years of experience a senior welding instructor and safety equipment researcher and writes articles, reviews and guidelines on helmets and other welding and safety gears at Welder Choice, and other written works have been published in various publications.