Shop accidents and near misses

[richtools]

Having spent many years working with and around machinery all of us have seen or been the victim of accidents or near misses.

One that I would like to share involved lathe operation. I was running a lathe doing something routine while BS-ing with Bill, one of the fellow workers who was standing near the tailstock of the lathe. I was busy looking at what I was doing facing the chucked work as we were chatting. All of a sudden I heard a moan from Bill and found he had his jacket wrap up in the lead screw. His face was pulled down to the bed of the lathe before the shear pin finally broke. I consider this a near miss as he was not hurt, and the only damage was to his jacket asnd his ego. We both learned a valuable lesson; almost the hard way. Not sure what would have happened if the lathe had been bigger and heavier duty, but it wouldn't have been pretty.

Over the years at "safety tailgate meetings" we were encouraged to share stories such as this to help prevent others from making the same mistakes.

Anyone have other stories that could help the rest of us enjoy our hobby safely?

 

[tattoomike68]

when I was a machine tool repairman at a screw machine shop the guys were in my maintenance shop , two screw off operators were in there making a yo-yo when the one guys shirt got wraped up in the feed rod.

I ran over slamed the lathe in reverse and unwound the idiot and then chewed thier ass big time and put a stop to guys using anything in my end of the shop. they should have been watching thier machines , not dicking around.

even at home I tell the old lady to leave me alone so I dont screw up.

 

[Halcohead]

I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death before on many machinist boards, but I figure I'll toss in a couple of stories aswell:

My personal worst was gettin my hair caught in the spinning spindle of my boss's bridgeport J-head. I'm not foolish enough to put my face close enough to a cutter while the machine is running, what happened was I had hit the brake and not held it down long enough to stop the motor (my boss uses a loose belt). When I felt that cutter reeling my forehead towards its self, my hand somehowfound the brake in an instant. No damage, except much oil in my hair and a bruised ego.

I had a friend embed the chuck key from his lathe in the ceiling when he forgot to remove the key before turning it on.

Monster Garage had some total fool using a lathe with a carbide cutter and oil as a cutting fluid. He somehow got the cutter hot enough to reach the flash point of the cutting fluid, so the part erupted in flames. He panicked and turned off the lathe, rather than leaving it on and letting the small fire on the part burn out. This let the fire spread to the coolant pan, and suddenly there was quite a large fire. I was always told if there's a fire on a lathe with a quick moving spindle DON'T STOP THE LATHE, let the fire burn out rather than spread to the coolant pan.

I've heard about plenty of other grisly accidents, but they aren't neccessarily educating, so much as revolting.

 

[tattoomike68]

an air hose works good for a lathe fire.

do not put water on a magnesium fire.

 

[Mike Henry]

A couple of months ago I managed to suck my fingertip into the end of a spinning 9/16" end mill while checking the finish on the most recent pass. The edge of the EM cut about 1/8" deep across the outer half the nail. Didn't hurt much, but bled like crazy for a couple of days and took about 6 weeks to heal.

I still catch myself starting to test the finish while the spindle is turning.

Mike

 

[HelEx]

Mike Henry,
You'll be glad to know you're not the only one to be caught by that trick.......
On another occasion I walked through the workshop at the university where I work (I don't work in the workshop) and the young apprentice was standing by one of the lathes with no shirt on. I commented he should be careful he doesn't get his chest hairs caught in the chuck. Came back a minute later and then realised he'd had his shirt ripped off by the leadscrew - he had a habit of not tucking it in. It caused a panic and all the workshops in the University had to have sliding covers fitted over the leadscrews. Should just make them tuck in their shirts, or wear close-fitting clothing.
In my research group we have a small workshop with a couple of lathes, and we teach PhD students to use them. I always relish telling the long haired ones that if they don't wear a hairnet or ponytail they could be scalped or have their face ripped off by catching their hair in the chuck. Been known to happen.....

- Mike -

 

[Access Db Guy]

Back at the start of my apprentiship, all the students were informed we would be required to wear ties when in the classroom setting. The first day we reported to the shop we were sitting in class and an instructor walked up and down the rows, taking scissors to everyone with a long tie.

The shop called long ties "strangle ties" and, of course, they were prohibited on the shop floor. We all wore bow ties so if in class, we could be called down to the shop for "look-and-learn" without worrying about having a strangle tie.

My Mom, of course, insisted that if I was going to wear a bow tie, I'd wear a real one. No clip-on, no strapes, real tie-it-yourself bow tie.

So now in my closet I've more than 70 "real" bow ties that family have sent as joke gifts over the years.

Also, all apprentics were required to have "crew cut" haircuts. This during a period when all boys our age wanted long comb-back-into-duck-tail style haircuts.

 

[BT066]

Everybody makes mistakes.
Accidents happen.

BUT
When I interviewed fellow toolmakers to work for me...I made sure they could count to ten.
If you can't count to ten...your not very careful.

Just my point of view.

S**T does happen!

Thanks
BT

 

[wlbrown]

HELLO TO ALL,
this happened in my shop at home after
i retired. a friend brought a hub to me
to press a bearing out, to replace it.
i put it in my press, and started to
bring the pressure up. i told him to get
back, but i did not think about myself.
a hydraulic hose seperated at the fitting,
and whipped across my face. it broke the
frame on my glasses, but not the lens, and
i had two black eyes for about a week.
wlbrown

 

[chuckey]

The only accident I have seen was, when I was an Apprentice, I was operating a large shaper,when a senior Apprentice ( my superviser) came up and started chatting about the job. Suddenly he started to swear then went red in the face and started to rotate about his middle!! I hit the stop button and when the motor stopped he was upside down with a VERY tight dust coat on. When I helped him to extricate himself, it became apparent that there was a large aluminium nut on the end of a shaft which had got all roughed up by the use of the wrong sized wrenches, this had screwed into the back of his very loose dustcoat, which when all the slack had been taken up, span him upside down. Luckily no harm was done other then the coat was a total write-off. A lot of loose tools in his pockets (a scriber, 6" ruler, screwdrivers etc. )all had taken the oppurtunity to burst through his dustcoat OUTWARDS, the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. A polished rounded cap was then fitted to the nut to preclude this happening again.

Careful where you linger!

best wishes
Chuckey

 

[scphantm]

when i was a body man, there was a series of GM cars, i think it was the early pontiac sunbirds, that had a weird electrical problem on the top of the steering column. when you had the top of the column off, and touched the wire connections just right, the car would start and fall into gear with some throttle behind it. GM sent countless warnings about the car, we had them taped on the top of everyones box to disconnect the battery before starting to work on these things. we had a guy doing an alignment on one that forgot to disconnect the battery, we were waiting for the dash pieces to come in so the bodyman working on it had all that taken out still, but it was far enough along to align. the alignment dude had the thing on the elevated rack and had the wheels down on the bearing plates when he reached in the window to pull off the brake contraption, he rested his hand on the top of the column while undoing the brake and it started and took off. launched off the alignment rack, into his tool box and drove the car and his toolbox thru the cinder block wall behind them pinning the painter on the other side of the wall between the tool box on his side of the wall and the car he was working on, all this with the alignment guy still hanging out the window of the car.

the painter got out of it with some pretty serious bruses, nothing broken. the alignment guy had a few broken ribs. totaled the car. from that point on the dealership refused to work on those cars. we wouldn't even change the oil in one.

since the battery wasn't disconnected like it should have been, the insurance company refused to pay for the damages, and left both guys with destroyed tool boxes, the alignment guy had most of the tools in his box destroyed. we had to use a cutting torch to get most of them out. the owner of the dealership was so pissed that the insurance company wouldn't pay for the damaged tools he bought both of them a new box (exact replacement of what they had) and helped out the alignment guy replacing his destroyed tools.

 

[Access Db Guy]

The shop where I grew up had 2"-wide yellow lined boxes around the 'teeth' end of any machine. For example, on a shaper (power OFF!), move the ram all the way forward, figure out where the farthest point is(tool holder), come out another 18", and there be the yellow line. Ditto for rearward movement.

Unless you were the operator, you did not want to get caught by the foreman or any of the Craftmasters standing inside the yellow box of any machine.

 

[Imakechips]

Once(and only once) while running a jig grinder with a very small CBN wheel(around .05) I raised the head of the machine and attempted to check the hole with a gage pin, it was a tight fit,but went in without undue force so I then tried to remove said gage pin to let the hole finish "sparking out". Unfortunately, the pin didn't want to come back out and when it did I managed to jamb the tiny little wheel under my thumbnail while it was turning something like 60,000-80,000 rpm. That hurt just a little.

Another fun one was when I just happened to be standing the wrong place and hit the up button for a surface grinder spindle. The feed dial went to spinning and the handle hit me in the cods a couple of times. I literally though I was going to puke! Needless to say, I make sure to be clear of that wheel when I hit the button

 

[RAS]

Oh, boy! I've seen quite a few, and been an unwilling participant in one or two. At my 1st machine shop job (six spindle screw machines) there was one machine that took a while to wind down, after knocking it out of gear, and hitting the stop lever. A 'peon' (part checker, stock loader), for some strange reason, decided to try to clear chips out of a 5/8-18 threaded part with his index finger, as the machine slowed! Needless to say, his finger was threaded, up to the 1st knuckle. At another shop (large bore 90*, 45*, elbows, tees, and reducers), we had just come out of a 'pep talk' with management, encouraging everyone to increase productivity. A co-worker decided to up the rpm on the VTL he was running from 19 to 36. He was machining a weld end prep on a 24" dia., 90* elbow... chain broke on the fixture, elbow came out (3" wall elbow, btw) took out two toolboxes, and left a divot in the concrete floor that the Namco forklift always got it's rear wheel stuck in, if you hit it. Lol...I could go on...

RAS

 

[Michael Az]

Wasn't a machine shop, but just last week a fellow a mile down the road from me got caught in a belt that drives a rock crusher. Killed him instantly, was only 31 years old. He was working alone and found by his brother. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to start a machine and reverse it to remove whats left of your brother.
Michael

 

[L Webb]

One thing that still amazes me to this day is that when I worked at Westinghouse doing heavy steel fabrication making the steam equipment for nuclear plants is the fact we weren't required to wear hardhats. They were an optional item.

Some guys wore them all the time and others never wore one. I wore one occassionally if people were working above me. The old fabricators I worked with never wore them. They all wore ballcaps. It was much easier to climb around inside the condensers and such without a hardhat. I would often be wearing my welding hood and smacked that into enough things in the tight quarters.

I think we had a pretty good safety record there. Not once while working two different shifts over a four year period did I ever see an ambulance need to be called. We gave the local industrial medical clinic plenty of business fixing the usual little things that are going to occur with steel fabrication.

I myself visited the clinic twice for grinding swarf in the eye. Even though I had safety glasses and a full faceshield on, the debris still finds a way into your eye while using a large angle grinder inside a feedwater heater shell.

We had plenty of near misses with incidents in the plant. Some guys were just plain lucky they didn't get hurt by things they did.

This one fabricator was great. He would always warn me about something not being OSHA approved as he did it. Like the night we had to climb up between the tube support sheets in a condenser that wasn't tubed yet.
I took off chimney climbing the 25' distance to the top. He had a bunch of wedges and placed them in the holes in the tube sheets giving him steps to go up. Not OSHA approved he told me as he did it.

Les

 

[surplusjohn]

when I was in school we had a nicely equiped welding-woodworking shop with a brand new Unisaw, a Doall etc. One evening I walked in and noticed a fellow female student about to feed what I thought was a large sheet of 1/4 inch plexiglass in the wrong direction on the table saw, I stopped her explaining that the saw would had shot the plexi across the room, then I noticed that it was a sheet of GLASS! I think she owes me her life LOL.

 

[vinito]

There are a few anecdotes I could talk about. I think it would behoove us all to review our working habits from time to time and avoid the complacency trap.

I'll admit to you all here that I have a mental problem. I am a serious and chronic pessimist. This makes life less fun and takes more effort to be happy than the average person, but the silver lining is it helps me to work safer. I compulsively think "how can this possibly go wrong?", so I often review mental images of severed appendages and high-velocity projectiles as I'm working and it helps to keep me from doing stupid things. I say "helps" because sometimes I still realize what could have happened after I've already done it, which I suspect we all do.

The worst occasion I'm related to is at my current job. I was hired because they became one man short. He was the lead man and had worked there for 25 years without incident. One day he made two mistakes which ended his life. 1)He wore a long-sleeved sweatshirt and 2) he was filing the burr off an edge on the manual lathe with his left hand on the outer end of the file (left arm over right). He broke his neck & back in at least three places and many ribs, and his arm was not in one piece. It was a grizzly scene I'm glad I wasn't there to witness it. I am just guessing here, but I imagine complacency was the root of the cause, and it could happen to any of us.

Mantra for the day: "How could this possibly go wrong?"

 

[Greglea45]

I have a 3HP Buffer fixed with a 8" buff wheel on one side and a inflated drum sander on the other. The drum sander has a valve for air sticking out. The buffer is not connected to a vacumn and throws a lot of dust around so I put it on the slab outside the shop door and was polishing some brass pieces. I walked into the shop for something and left the buffer running. I hear a scream and a lot of flapping going on and look up to see my wife (great looking redhead) completely topless outside with some guy. I'm thinking what the hell is this? A visitor had stopped at the house interested in my work, she walked him to the shop and while walking around the buffer the tail of her snap button blouse caught on the air value. If it had been of heavy fabric it could have been bad, it was light cotton and ripped off. The visitor looks at me says "Damn, guess it's my lucky day" Now I turn the buffer off when I walk away.

 

[L Webb]

Now that is funny Rick.

It is OK to laugh about it now, but I bet the wife wasn't too happy when it happened.

Les