EN 388 Protective Gloves Against Mechanical Risks

The European standard "EN 388 Protective gloves against mechanical risks" describes the requirements, test methods and marking requirements that must be met for protective gloves against mechanical risks such as abrasion, knife cuts, tears, punctures and impacts, if any.

This standard is intended to be used in conjunction with the standard "EN 420 Protective gloves - General requirements and test methods". The test methods developed in this standard can also be applied to arm protectors.

For the purposes of this standard, the following terms and definitions apply:

• Protective gloves against mechanical risks refer to gloves that provide protection against at least one of the mechanical risks such as abrasion, knife cut, tear and puncture.
• A glove that provides specific protection refers to a glove that is designed to provide enhanced coverage for the entire hand or a portion of it, such as a palm protection style or impact protection.
• Glove series are single glove style or glove type with the same palm material up to the wrist line, the only variants are size, length, left/right hand and color.
• Arm refers to the part of the body between the wrist and the shoulder.

Gloves made of several layers mean:

• Non-bonded layers: A glove made of 2 or more layers of material that are not bonded together after preparing the sample for testing.
• Bonded layers: A glove made from 2 or more layers of material that are bonded together (e.g. glued, sewn, dipped, impregnated) after preparing the sample for testing.

- Arm protector refers to a protective cover separate from gloves or clothing that provides protection against at least one of the mechanical risks such as abrasion, blade cut, tear and puncture.

According to this standard, protective gloves must primarily meet all the applicable requirements of the EN 420 standard. For classification purposes, all samples must be taken from the palms of different gloves. For arm protectors, samples must be taken from the area where protection is claimed. A protective glove against mechanical risks must have a performance level of 1 or above for at least one property (abrasion, blade cut, tear and puncture) or at least level A of the cut resistance test described in the EN ISO 13997 standard.

There is no correlation between the performance levels obtained by the blade cut resistance test and the cut resistance test methods.

Each area where impact protection is required is tested. Due to the size of the test specimens, protection against impacts to the fingers cannot be tested. A protective glove against mechanical risks may be designed and manufactured to provide specific impact attenuation (e.g. impact protection of the knuckles, back of the hand, palm). In this case, when the tests are carried out according to the impact test, the performance must comply with level 13594 of the table in the EN 1 standard.

Samples and all other test consumables must be conditioned at 23 degrees plus/minus 2 degrees and 50 percent plus/minus 5 percent relative humidity. The conditioning period is at least 24 hours. Tests should preferably be performed in the environment specified above.

If testing is performed in a different environment and the test duration does not exceed 15 minutes, testing should be initiated within 5 minutes of removal from conditioning. If special applications require testing in a different environment, it is the responsibility of the manufacturer or its authorized representative to ensure that additional testing is performed and to present the results in the information provided by the manufacturer along with a full description of the test environment.

Among the numerous tests, measurements, analyses and evaluation studies carried out for businesses in various sectors, our organization also provides testing services defined in the “EN 388 Protective gloves against mechanical risks” standard with its trained and expert staff and advanced technological equipment.