A bad day

Maybe for you it's "playing". For some people (and this used to be me) it was a question of how I built big dangerous machines and put them in a factory where stupid people on piecework would come back from the pub at lunchtime with some great idea about how to work faster by jamming the guards open.

My problem wasn't the smart people - they could by and large look after themselves. I once dangled a co-worker by his ankles _inside_ a double eccentric press whilst I barred it over on the slow motor, so that he could count the teeth on the dog clutch. This was an act guaranteed to give any safety inspector conniptions, but it was _relatively_ safe because we both had a pretty good idea of what we were doing and were concentrating on doing it.

Sometimes I got to work on machines in toolrooms, where they'd be used by the most skilled machinists you could hope to meet. Most of the time though, they were for low-skilled grunts to earn minimum wage with at McJobs and yet I _still_ had a legal responsibility to keep these people safe from any deviousness they could invent (and they sure were inventive, when it came to defeating guards).

I got out of the control gear business when a software bug in my code very nearly took an operator's arm off. I looked very carefully at how this problem arose, and my conclusion was that it was a systems error more than a coding problem. Given the stack of sub-contracting going on, and the poor communication and rushed timescales between the people building the ironwork and my software team, I couldn't guarantee anything I could really stand behind as a competently safe system. It was my responsibility to sign these things off as "built to best industry practices", even if I couldn't guarantee them to be entirely safe, and under those cost-squeezing measures there just wasn't a way I could do this.

Reply to
Andy Dingley
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Any guard can be defeated, be it gate plugs, palm buttons, light curtains, even a harness hooked to the ram on a press. I think I've seen it all, as I'm sure you have. We've found the best way to deal with this crap is to hit 'em where it hurts when caught. A few days sitting home with no pay works pretty good. Another thing that works well is to get rid of piece work pay and go to an hourly rate with a production standard.

Reply to
Jim

"Jim" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@news.chartermi.net...

I work at a large dairy plant with lots of semi dangerous machinery.. Local safety regulations specify that machinery with moving parts has to be enclosed in such a way that noone can get their limbs caught in the moving parts ( conveyorbelts not included )..

This is mostly achieved by putting a fence around the machine with switches that "kill" the machine when the door opens.. The switches are typically something like this one:

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Most of my coworkers have found way to defeat this system ( Some even have the key part of the switch above in their keyring ), so if the machine is having a bad day they will operate it with the doors open.. So far only one person has been injured from this ( new trainee got her arm caught in a large sled like thing moved by a huge pneumatic actuator)..

Most of the time you will just need to "cheat" a sensor inside the machine.... I usually do this with a broomstick, but some people stick their arm inside without stopping the machine..

The policy from the management side is that you can and will be fired if caught messing with the safety devices on the machinery.. Unfortunately this is not being enforced

If its enforced, yes.. Problem here is that the local laws say that its the employers responsibility if someone gets hurt.. Even if they are acting like idiots..

/peter

Reply to
Q

Many a farmer versus manufacturer lawsuit has been the result of a farmer opening a panel, disabling a safety and promptly loosing a body part to a still running machine.

Joel. phx

Reply to
Joel Corwith

no company can afford to operate unsafely...

from lawsuits, insurance claims, absenteeisms, retraining costs, even public image...there are all sorts of direct and indirect costs associated with accidents. if for no other reason, a clean conscious is enough for me to make sure everything i do for my company is constructed 1st...with safety in mind, and then all other objectives.

it is a misconception to believe "intelligent" people are less likely to be injured. given enough time around enough dangers...anyone can become a statistic of workplace injury.

big industry has big dangers...trainig, ppe, safety devices, safety programs, awareness...these are some of the tools that have to be utilized by any company who wants to be succesful. anything less is unacceptable.

if you disagree, then you have not seen the things i have.

chuck

Andy D> >

Reply to
Chuck Willis

BTW, I've worked in the Army handling Pershing guided missiles, in the engine rooms of cargo ships, and about

25 years of various industry.

Nothing I saw in all that time scared me as much as working a day with my brother in his orchard.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

I had a Physics professor in college who told us about an extremely high voltage setup he was working on with another guy. It was enclosed in a fence with a door that when opened, would drop down a grounding pole to the setup so all the energy (stored in capacitors) would be dissipated before you could get to the table. The other guy wanted to take a measurement while the thing was running and disabled the safety. He went in, touched the setup, and was killed. When will people realize the safeties are there for a reason?

-Matt

Reply to
Matthew Douglas Rogge

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