Large, high speed printers can be very dangerous. Typically, if there is a violation of the safe space around the equipment it calls for an immediate shutdown. The shutdown preserves the safety of the employees, but there is a commercial cost in terms of significant loss of processed product and equipment downtime. Using functional safety encoders, the printer can have different safety zones assigned to it, each controlled by its own motor in synchronization with the other motors on the line. If a worker were to violate the space, only the one zone would shut down and the other non-violated zones could adjust their speed in such a way to protect their functions but also reduce the commercial cost of a safety violation.