Safety and standards
What is actually checked
Who checks a machine like this, what happens where the rules run out, and which numbers we had to decide ourselves.
If you read one part
The short answer
It cannot press harder than the limit built into it, whatever anyone sets
It never works above your shoulder line
The stop is in your hand, and somebody sets the session up with you and starts it
No machine enters a Sestala room before it is approved for Europe, insured and under a service contract
The rest of this page is why we had to decide some of those numbers ourselves rather than look them up.
Where the rules stop
Nobody has written the rules for this yet
Robots that work in factories have detailed safety rules. Robots that lie a person down and press on them for an hour have almost none.
The factory standards exclude this use by name, and their published figures measure accidental bumps rather than deliberate pressure held for an hour. That gap is why the four limits on this page exist - and why finding a manufacturer able to meet all of them for the European market took so long.
What we did about it
So we wrote the numbers down
Where nobody supplies a limit, somebody has to pick one, write it down and say whose it is. These are ours, applied per machine, in writing:
7 kg
The firmest it goes
About the push of a seven kilo weight resting on you. Nothing you ask for goes past it.
Never
Above the shoulder
Not a setting somebody could change. The arm does not go there.
40 °C
Warmth, capped
About a warm bath, and you run at 37. Mechanical pressure and heat, nothing else.
450 ms
To stop
Under half a second from touching the stop. Faster than you can say the word.
Every session
Set up and started
A person sets it with you before anything moves. The control in your hand is yours for the whole of it.
None
Radiating energy
No radiofrequency, EMS, shockwave or ultrasound. Pressure and warmth do the work, and nothing is passed through you.
What the law requires
Three things it already fixes
European law treats a machine like this as machinery, and some of what it demands is what you would ask for anyway. Safety information printed in your own language. A stop control within reach of somebody lying down. A way off the table even if the power is gone.
The Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 replaces the 2006 Machinery Directive from 20 January 2027, with no run-off for new machines.
No health claims
What it does is the whole promise
We will never tell you a session treats or relieves anything, and no page here names a condition. What you can rely on is what the machine physically does: mechanical pressure and gentle warmth, and nothing else. No current, no shockwave, no ultrasound.
The words
What the terms mean
CE mark
The maker's own declaration that a machine meets Europe's essential requirements. It is a passport rather than a licence: it says the machine may be sold here, and nothing about whether a particular venue may run a particular session.
Force ceiling
The hardest the machine may ever press, whatever anyone asks for. Ours is 70 newtons - about 7 kg at the firmest of the ten pressure levels - and it sits in the machine rather than in a policy, so no setting and no update moves it.
Stop control
The control that halts the arm. European machinery law says it has to be within reach of somebody lying down, and that you can get off the table even if the power fails. Our own requirement on top: motion ceases within 450 milliseconds.
Cobot
A robot built to share space with people rather than be fenced off from them. The safety standards written for cobots govern factories, and say in writing that they do not cover service, consumer or healthcare use.
Hygiene cycle
The recorded reset between two people on the same table. No borrowed standard governs it, so it is specified by the operator and logged by the machine rather than left to whoever is on shift.
How a machine is set up for us
Every Sestala machine is configured the same way before it works on anybody: pressure and heat only, warmth capped, the force ceiling fixed, no neck work, the maker locked out of remote access, and a person to set the session up and start it. Checked machine by machine rather than assumed.
Still deciding whether this is for you?
A straight comparison of the formats, and what actually happens in a session, are both a click away.