EN388 is changing - here’s what you need to know

EN388 is the European standard that requires gloves with mechanical risks to be tested accordingly. It is by law mandatory for every glove with these properties to test its abrasion, cut, tear and puncture resistance - and now including Cut Resistance ISO 13997 and Impact Resistance.

Cut Resistance - Coup Testing and new ISO 13997

The Coup Test will still be in use when testing cut resistance in gloves. This test is conducted as following;

The glove will be placed on a plain surface under a rotating blade. The blade will then move in a back-and-forth motion as it’s pressed down by 500 g of pure weight. When the blade has cut the glove 60 times, the glove will be replaced with a reference material, usually a cotton canvas.

The glove and cotton canvas tests will be conducted five times each. To ensure proper results.

What level of cut protection will be listed in the standard is determined after analyzing the ratio of number of times the surface will move back-and-forth before the glove is completely cut through. The number will be between 1-5.

If the glove is said to have special cut protection, if the blade used curing the Coup Test gets dull or if the results from Coup Testing shows the gloves have extraordinary cut protection properties, it’ll be tested according to the ISO 13997 standard.

Nowadays, the gloves often have steel- or glass yarn providing extra cut protection and the Coup Test has shown faulty results with these types of materials because the cutting blade gets dull. Therefore, ISO 13997 has been added as an extra validation to cut resistance properties.

The ISO 13997 test will be conducted as following;

The glove will be placed on a curved surface under a straight blade. The surface will move in a back-and-forth motion and pressure will apply from underneath the surface.

The motion will continue until the surface and the blade connects through an electric connection.

The cutting blade will then be replaced with a new, sharp one and the glove will go under testing again with added weight pressing from underneath.

The test will be repeated five times with three different pressure weights to ensure results. The level of protection, ranging from A-F will be determined after how many times the glove has been cut-through.

Impact Test Standards - EN 13594:2015

This testing is completely new to the EN388 standard. This test will determine if the glove has sufficient impact protection according to the standard. The test will isolate the area with explicit impact protection, usually this is the backhand and knuckles, and will be impacted with an impact energy of 5J (1,7 kg). The results will simply be represented with a P if the glove passes the test.

ADX-288 MaxGuard

Abrasion Testing

The abrasion test means that one abrase the gloves palm until it creates a hole. Like before, the test will be conducted according to the Martindale method which means it’ll be as natural and casual as possible. The improvement to this test is the paper being used when testing. From now on it’ll be a special type of glass paper abrading the glove until it’s created a hole.

Marking System

Because Impact Testing and ISO 13997 has been added to the EN388 standard, they will now be represented after the usual abrasion, cut, tear and puncture in the pictogram. The presentation levels of these four will remain the same but additionally the ISO 13997 results will be added and measured with A-F where A, B, C and D are new values while E represents a level of protection similar to the Coup Test level 5. Level F will represent a higher measured level of protection than what has previously been indicated. If the glove fail the ISO 13997 testing the pictogram column will show an X.

Impact Protection will be represented by a P if the glove has been tested and approved according to the standard. If the glove hasn’t been tested it’ll be presented with an X.