Conveyor Safety Labels and E-Stop Identification Under ASME B20.1 and CEMA 201

A conveyor guard keeps a hand out of a nip point. A label tells the person walking by why the guard is there — and which E-stop actually kills the line if something goes wrong.

What ASME B20.1 Expects on a Conveyor

ASME B20.1, Safety Standard for Conveyors and Related Equipment, is the base design standard most conveyor OEMs and integrators build to in the US. It sets requirements for guarding at pinch points, nip points, and other points of operation, for emergency stop devices reachable along the length of the conveyor, and for warning labels at hazards that guarding alone can't eliminate — automatic start-up, stored energy in a take-up, an unenclosed return run. B20.1 tells you where a warning or an E-stop has to exist. It does not supply label artwork or exact wording, and requirements shift between editions, so check the current edition and your AHJ before finalizing a design.

CEMA 201: The Pictorial Layer

The Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association's Safety Label Brochure 201 is the industry's standard library of pictorial Danger, Warning, and Caution labels for conveyors — pinch point, entanglement, automatic start-up, falling material, crushing, and similar hazards. CEMA 201 labels are decal-based pictorials meant to be recognized at a glance, in any language, from across a plant floor. We don't reproduce CEMA artwork here — the actual decals come from CEMA member suppliers. What we make is the layer CEMA doesn't cover: durable, engraved identification of the equipment and its controls.

ANSI Z535: Signal Words and Colors

ANSI Z535.2 (signs) and Z535.4 (product safety labels) set the header hierarchy that CEMA 201, and any custom conveyor label, should follow:

• DANGER — white text on red, imminent hazard that will cause death or serious injury
• WARNING — black text on orange, hazard that could cause death or serious injury
• CAUTION — black text on yellow, hazard that could cause minor or moderate injury
• NOTICE — blue, property damage or non-injury information

Any label added outside the CEMA set — a custom pinch point warning at a nonstandard guard opening, for example — should match this same word and color scheme so it reads consistently with the rest of the line.

The 2024 Edition: Remote E-Stops Have to Say Which Conveyor They Stop

Multi-conveyor lines — sortation, palletizing, case handling — often group emergency stop devices on a common panel or pendant some distance from the conveyors they control, rather than mounting a stop on every section. The 2024 edition of B20.1 addresses this directly: where an emergency stop device is located away from the conveyor it controls, that device has to identify which equipment it stops. That's not a pictorial hazard warning — it's equipment identification, and it's a plain engraved plate job. In practice that means something like:

E-STOP: CONVEYOR C-3

or, for a station that kills more than one section:

E-STOP — STOPS CONVEYORS C-3, C-4

mounted directly on or beside the button. During an actual emergency nobody has time to trace conduit back to figure out which stop kills which belt — the plate has to answer that in under a second. Confirm the exact wording your AHJ or your integrator's safety review expects; this is a good spot to check the current edition rather than assume.

Pinch Points, Lockout Points, and Start-Up Warnings

Placement matters as much as wording. Typical points that need a label, a guard, or both:

• Nip points at head, tail, and snub pulleys, and wherever belt meets roller
• Take-ups and tensioners, which store energy even when the drive is off
• Drive guards over chains, sprockets, and couplings
• Automatic start-up points — anywhere a photo-eye, timer, or upstream signal can start the conveyor without a person pressing a button
• Lockout points — the energy-isolating devices a technician actually uses during maintenance

Lockout points carry their own identification requirement, separate from B20.1 — see our lockout/tagout tag guide for what a compliant LOTO tag needs to say.

Control Stations and Pull Cords Need Durable ID Too

Push-button stations — START, STOP, JOG, E-STOP — and pull-cord (rope) emergency stops running the length of a conveyor both need legends that hold up. Printed or adhesive labels fade, peel, and go unreadable within a year or two in a washdown, dusty, or high-temperature environment. Engraved two-ply plastic control station legends and engraved stainless for washdown areas keep text and color-fill legible for the life of the equipment. A pull-cord station, like a remote E-stop panel, should also carry the conveyor ID it stops if that isn't obvious from its location.

Typical Conveyor Label Locations

Worked Example: Identification Scheme for a Three-Conveyor Line

A simple, consistent scheme scales better than one-off wording per station. For a line with conveyors C-1, C-2, and C-3 feeding a common takeaway, and a single remote E-stop pendant covering all three:

• Equipment nameplate at each drive: CONVEYOR C-1 — DRIVE 2 HP, 480V 3PH
• Local E-stop, mounted on the conveyor: no equipment ID needed, its location is unambiguous
• Remote E-stop pendant: E-STOP — STOPS CONVEYORS C-1, C-2, C-3, with individual buttons labeled C-1 / C-2 / C-3 above each
• Lockout point at each disconnect: LOCKOUT — CONVEYOR C-1 MAIN DISCONNECT
• Pinch point guards: standard CEMA pictorial decal, no custom wording needed

Everything with a control designation or an equipment name is an engraved plate. Everything that's a pictorial hazard warning is a CEMA decal. The two layers don't substitute for each other — see our rectangle lamacoid configurator to lay out a set like this.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do CEMA 201 labels replace the need for engraved equipment tags?

No. CEMA 201 covers pictorial hazard warnings — pinch point, entanglement, automatic start-up, and similar. It doesn't identify which specific conveyor or E-stop you're looking at in a multi-conveyor system. That identification is a separate, equipment-marking function that engraved plates handle.

Does ASME B20.1 specify label colors and wording?

B20.1 tells you where guarding, warnings, and emergency stops are required. The signal word hierarchy and colors come from ANSI Z535.2 and Z535.4, and CEMA 201 applies that hierarchy to its pictorial library. Confirm current edition requirements with your AHJ or safety engineer.

What changed in the 2024 edition regarding E-stops?

The 2024 edition addresses emergency stop devices located away from the conveyor they control, requiring that the device identify which equipment it stops. This matters most on lines where E-stop panels or pendants are shared across multiple conveyor sections.

What material holds up best for conveyor control station legends?

Engraved two-ply plastic is standard for indoor, dry-to-moderate environments. For washdown, outdoor, or high-heat locations near ovens or dryers, engraved stainless resists the fading and delamination that adhesive labels see after a few years.

Where should the conveyor ID go on a pull-cord station?

Directly on or immediately beside the pull-cord handle or reset switch, in a spot visible without having to trace the cord back to the conveyor itself.

Can TagBuilder match CEMA label colors on a custom plate?

Yes — engraved plates can be ordered in the same DANGER/WARNING/CAUTION color combinations set by ANSI Z535, so a custom identification plate reads consistently next to CEMA pictorial decals.

A complete conveyor safety package pairs CEMA pictorial decals with engraved equipment and control identification: warning plates at hazard points, lockout tags at each isolation point, and E-stop identification wherever a stop device sits away from the line it kills. Build the set with the rectangle lamacoid configurator once you've mapped out which conveyors and stations need marking.

UL, NFPA, NEC, ASME, CEMA, TIA, ANSI and OSHA are names or marks of their respective organizations; TagBuilder is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Requirements above are paraphrased summaries, not the text of any standard. Always work from the current published edition and your AHJ.