o/t Safety @ work

[Shady]

I had my hand wrapped up in a lathe a few years back while trying to hurry a job out the door. Stupid me didnt take glove off while sanding the shaft. I didnt lose any fingers but did hyperextend all 4 on that hand. They swelled like a mother....and turned black. I have a reminder everytime it gets cold and rainy....my left hand stiffens and aches. Please keep the gloves away from rotating shafts. ~~~~~~~Shady

[Brendan P]

Latest update:

Looks like he spent all weekend at Boston's Mass General Hospital.

Word is he lost the tips of (3) fingers and also has ligament damage.

 

BTW...About 6 years ago,another employee lost 1 1/2 fingers to a brake press!

OSHA is gonna love us.

 

IMO,this all goes back to the so called supervisors letting the guys have the run of the shop.

PS,it was never like this until Human Resorces started here!

[chris m]

I started out in this trade in a short-run stamping sweatshop that had a lot of presses built in the '30s and '40s with the mechanical [dog style] clutches referenced above in this thread and we were always worried about the guys getting hurt. We had a couple presses that used to repeat [stroke twice] from time to time and EVERY time I heard the 'thump thump' instead of just 'thump' I used to stick my head out in the shop and make sure everyone was still in one piece. Scary stuff.

 

We had a lot of guys in the shop that were Spanish-only speakers and my Spanish is fair at best so communication was often part oral and part gesturing to get the point across; one night one of these guys came running in my office and said "Carlos..." and made a chopping motion across his fingers, I thought I was gonna puke as I sprinted across the shop only to find Carlos had grabbed the sharp edge of a piece of sheet stock and cut himself but was still intact...I was too relieved that the guy was OK to be pissed at his buddy's choice of gestures!

 

A couple of years after I left the shop had an OSHA visit [part of their 'mechanical power press initiative'] and has sigificantly upgraded all of their safety mechanisms, including eliminating ALL of the dog-clutch presses...

 

C

[Bruce Caulley]

A bloke where I did my apprenticeship was operating a manual lathe while wearing an old t-shirt complete with hold and daggy ends. One second he's standing there with it on, the next the feed screw had ripped it off him. Lucky he wasn't wearing a decent shirt. Gloves and untucked shirts scare the hell out of me.

 

Another thing that is common and dangerous is using coolant in a cup to dip parts in at a bench grinder. The parts get slippery and have a tendency to end up on the opposite side of the room. I always make a point of re-filling these with clean water whenever I see them with coolant in them.

[MasterNick]

well, i got nipped by the surface grinder last thursday. The only thing is, our surface grinder wheel is fairly large about 15-20" dia. and a nip for it, is a hugh gash for me. I was laying my parts down on the table, and one of them, which just so happens to be the one closest to the wheel slipped out of my hand. And what happend next ended up cutting away some skin, and cut one of my tendons on my left hand middle knuckle. I've now got a bunch of stiches, and my hand is in a splint for 2-4 weeks, but man it could've been worse. I could of been wearing gloves and got my whole hand caught in it.

 

I don't use a surface grinder much, but now I've learned an lesson. Also, i have a question do most of you make sure to have the grinding wheel off when loading your parts, even after you dressed the wheel, this may be a stupid question, but i'm still an appentice.

[Bruce Caulley]

I also cut a tendon once. Get ready to learn how to use your hand again.

 

Another fellow was loading a large roller on to a lathe and instead on winding up the centre, he turned the lathe on. The roller buckled under the startup load and smashed his arm in 11 places. Blood everywhere. One bone had a titanium rod inserted with the pieces of bone threaded on like beads. Half of one muscle had to be removed but would you believe he did not sever any major arteries or tendons.

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

I worked out the theory of "three bells ".

I worked in Russia as production engineer ,run machines ,set-upped them and in Israel in CNC trade for 12 years and run my machines myself.

I saw a lot of excidents and was many times close to it.

But :

It looks like nothing happens the first time ,and you can have luck the second time,but third time you`ll get it, that`s for sure .

That`s like in opera -three bells.

That `s the GOD ringing ....

The wise man not waits for a bell.

The clever man has his first bell and makes the right decision.

The regular man changes his mind after the second bell ,while the fool gets the third -the Doom bell.

I had my two bells long ago and doing my best not to have the third.

You can tell this theory to your operators .

 

The theologist ,

[Shady]

Pooh, I am sure that the bunch of ding-a-lings in my shop will appreciate your 3 bells theory. Thanks for your insight~~~~~~~Shady

[d00d]

I got one for ya. 10 years ago in a backyard shop, the extension cord was laying next to a manual lathe .

Well there were some pretty long strands of steel about 20 ft by .030 wide that had fallen to the floor out of the lathe. I was in the center of the shop benching. The clean up guy is dragging a shop vac and extension cord which entangles in a long strand of steel which when he pulls the cord that is conected to the strand entagled around my finger. He, feeling resistence on the cord gives it a good hard yank. Went all the way to the bone 3/4 of the way around my fingerbefore i even felt it.

[SledGeek]

Ouch. That reminds me of a die shop i used to work at. Lathe hand was bringing up some long curlies as well and they caught the ones below. He was leaning on the tailstock and one of em came around and stabbed him right in that vein in the crease in your arm and exited 2 inches below. I was about 30 feet away and could see the blood spray out went it ripped out of his arm.

[Thee Cutterman]

After spending a week in hospital with my father recovering from brain hemerages, i returned to work on the Monday with the attention span of my 3 year old. Finished the aluminium block that i had left in the v.m.c. only to find that i had set the z depth to shallow. Instead of putting the job back in the m/c,I walked up to the pedistal drill and run a 5mm drill through the job (2mm deeper without clamps) You guessed it. The job spun hitting me across the thumb 5 times. (i can still count the times it hit from the scars across the thumb)First time in 16 years in the trade i had been cought out by stupidity.

After some plastic surgery and a few stiches i have 90% movement and a stiff thumb during winter

Wish i was wearing boxing gloves

Dazza

 

 

[jackn]

safety seems to be a problem in a lot of shops....the last 20 yrs in my experience i have seen or been in some bad ones and for some reason we have to learn by experience...i keep harping on apprentices like an old mother hen...glasses...tuck your shirt in ...yadda yadda....sheesh if there was only some way we could pass our experiences on to them :0)

[Guest]

Yes. Youth is wasted on the young and experience is wasted on the old.

[Mike Mattera - TFM]

People dont think it could happen to them. At the last machinery company I worked for, the guy who moved the machines around, would lift them up in the air (20 ton crane) and stand underneath it. Even with new certified lifting straps, there's no way I would get underneath a 10,000 lb machine.

 

Saw a lathe guy running a barfeed job, put his hand on the bar and open the chuck. BAM!! Smashed it into the turret. Pieces of bone all over the place.

 

People just put themselves into places where bad things can happen. I wear my safty glasses everytime I go out into someone's shop. Customers are superised when I make a sales call and have my oun glasses.

 

Mike Mattera

[crazy^millman]

I was 18 years old working in my first place where we had a mill and lathe. I was making very big copper welding blades and the milling machine I was uing had no brake on it. I complained about the frist day I was hired. In school we were alway taught saftey by my teacher even though my frist 2 months at age 16 had to get 9 stiches were I layed open a about a 1/2 wide by 1/2 deep by about 2" long gash in my arm tighting a allen thread on a freshly sharpen lathe tool. Any way just took the problay 1" dia. cutter and side cut the end of this copper block to fit nice against the other I had just done. I turned th machine off and it was coasting to a stop and was feeling the surface to make sure it was nice when this guy from another department walked up behind me hitting me on the shoulder jamming my pointy finger right into the cutter that was only about .2 behind the blade. It stated to pull my hand end and i jerk my finger out it leave part of it there and grabbing my hand and just about knocking that guy on his arse to get someone to take me to the hospital cuase I knew it was bad. I walk into the front office and say I cut my finger off need ot go to the hospital. They all look at me and say yeah right. If you had cut your finger off you could not stand here. I am teeling them take me to the hospital and by this time the vice president, President and just about everyone in the office is standing around me. I have a death grip on my finger and this has keep the bleeding to a minumal thanks to all the boy scout training I knew what to do but they all just stood there like whatever. So I let my finger go to show everyone and blood goes everywhere like a freaking eruption. I get screming and yelling but guess what I was taking to the hospital very quick. Me not been so lucky when it come to stiches. I have about 40 scars and had stiches about 12 times in my life. Thought about 20 scars are from my car accident I still have a few from just unlucky things. Hit my finger with a dead blow one time, put my hand through a plate glass window one time by accident 29 stiched and a skin graph there, box cutter has got me 3 times, another time at the beach fell on split my arm open on the rocks, problay the most crazy scar came from stopping my brother to commit sucide. He locked himself in his tralier and told me he was going to kill himself. I grew up my whole life with him doing crazy things and I was about 20 or 21 and had enough of is crap. I took and puched out the window of his door to get in his house and stop him. He could not belive it I never had been so bold in my life but he was going to quit his crap if I has to beat it out of him. I cut my arm pulling it back out of the broken glass. The funny thing is he tells me I was not serious when I get inside but he never pulled another stunt like that again.

 

Saftey is important and agreed pepole take some crazy chances me problay more than most but problay no less than others I know. I would never want my guys to do soemthing unsafe when I was a boss and would always put myself in harms way before my people. Rules and thing are there to protect use wiether alot of people see it or not. We all have heard stroies and seen things that get our attention but how many of us use air to blow off chips. That is very unsafe. How many of us run a machine with the door open again very unsafe. I am not saying it is right but saftey in all honesty is up to the indivdual people as well as the person in charge and the comapny as a whole and even though alot of things are done for our protection alot of these things may do more harm than good becuase there is always that freak accident or that unexpected thing that just happens no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

 

Be safe think safe and do safe and hopefully you will stay safe. BTW sorry for the rant had not had a good one in a while.

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

---

Customers are superised when I make a sales call and have my oun glasses.

---

 

I command my respect ,Mick !

 

I have a theory of a reasonable coward .

You must be brave to do anything and a bit scared to stay alive .

Fear is a good thing when it is reasonable.

Brave man in our trade do not live long .

Most of my traumas not from metal-cutting ,

but from bicycle ( I was big fan of bicicle sport ,and never used a car ,always on bicycle ,off -road travels ,long trips and with chains on wheels traveled in winter on snow ).

Still I was lucky enough not to break spinebone or head ,as my buddies ,only legs ,ribs and arms and tear off skin .

I always liked a challenge but never did things too crazy ,well ,to tell the truth I did ,but in reasonable proportion .

One big problem is that many shifts here last 12 hours or you work the night shift and become tired ,and you can lost control .

Like a guy that I know that gripped a spinning rough mill with a hand ,just imagine .

When you are tired you must be tripple cautious

 

Teh reasonable coward

[Jack Mitchell]

I guess this happened about 12 years ago.

 

A local student employment agent approached me about taking a kid (high school dropout) for a few months to see if he was inclined for the trade; at no cost with all liability with the placing agent. I accepted young Steve as a prospect and would give him every opportunity to experience the various trade tasks.

 

This days task was simply running a small drill press with a tapmatic head for a couple of thousand ¼-20 threads in 1” x 1” x ¼” thick, predrilled, hot rolled precuts. He was blessed with long scraggly blond hair; not particularly handsome, but hardly an unattractive kid.

 

Anyways, I’m working about 10 feet from him when I hear the stool that he set upon; fly about 6 feet from him. This kid dropped a piece and it fell underneath the drill press. Lazily, he bent over to pick it up and presented the golden locks into the revolving 500 rpm spindle. To make a long story short – he actually stopped this 1/3 HP spindle with one hand and a hell of a lot of strength. He placed both hands on the side of his head. I grabbed his hands and said let me look at this in a very firm voice. Beholden to me was a bald scalp with tiny little beads of red where the hair follicles once were. It was sort of fortunate that his hair was rather long and gave his skull the spindle bounce required to shear the hair and leave his scalp intact.

 

I ran into him about a week later and witnessed all the gorgeous babes that admired his new found and radical look of being entirely bald on 50% of his head. I cut his golden locks from the spindle and kept them for several years in an envelope as a lesson for others.

 

I am also a stupid fool that had some cast iron scraped off of my eyeball; if another .05” then I would be legally blind in one eye – my good fortune is that this damage is slightly off center of my pupil; and yes, I was wearing safety glasses.

 

Regards, Jack