Apprentices and the like

[Laverda]

My best learning experiences on a manual lathe were the times I was stupid and got hurt. Since those days, I am the most careful lathe operator there is and have not been injured in many years. Apprentices don't understand machine tool safety until they are bleeding.

Now I am not advocating what the OP is asking as it is a stupid question. Doing something that will cause a crash is just bad for the machine and operator. But how do you get it into the apprentices head what happens when you do make a bad mistake?

Although my lathe has a brake, I still have to resist the temptation to try to slow down and stop the chuck with my hand so I can measure the part instead of waiting a couple seconds! Years ago I almost lost my left hand doing this on a 12" four jaw chuck that the jaws were sticking out. Ouch!

 

[john.k]

Ive only been lathe hurt once ,in a freak accident.....and not more than a deep cut .........Ive wound up an electric lead in swarf that was a bit spectacular............Ive had more close shaves from radial drills ......several times I had to jump over steel as it spun round ......nearest to serious was I undid the base bolts ,expecting the drill to be stable on its base .....it wasnt ,and fell over ......fortunately there was so much junk around ,it snagged on a big piece of steel ,and there was no damage to the drill or me.

 

[TGTool]

And it's always good to learn from the experience of others without having to do the same thing yourself.

The trade school instructor had a rule that only ONE person operated a machine at a time. Sure, you might be working with a buddy and can work together on setup and measuring but you don't share actual operation. He said that dated back to the two guys at one of the horizontal mills. One guy at the end of the table who just happened to be straddling the handle of the hand wheel. His buddy engaged rapid traverse. You can see where that goes.

 

[michiganbuck]

I find myself in a bit of a quandary. Is it ethically responsible to let an apprentice try something that he sees no problem with, but is almost certainly going to crash and break tooling because he doesn't have enough big crashes on manual equip. behind him yet. It's on a manual lathe, the injury risk is minimal and the experience is worth more than the work piece and tooling in my opinion

Good to tell an apprentice that slow careful steady work will outpace trying to make record time or taking chances.

 

[Plane Parts]

Make him buy his own cutters. He will be very careful about his set ups and operations. Not so confident when A $300 endmill is in a spindle.