OK, to start the "safety" juices flowing, what is the scariest tool (or stuff) in your shop?
The tool that gets my highest level of attention is the one that spins a ten inch piece of steel at 3450 rpm in open air - my table saw. I always use push sticks and wear safety glasses. If I had a meat-cutters chain mail glove I would probably wear that too :) .
The stuff that raised my hackles the highest was the quart mason jar I found tucked away in a corner of my garage when I moved in. It is labeled cyanide! Holy S--T! Cyanide! What in the world was the previous guy doing with that?

robotic regards,

Tom
= = = = =
"Invention is the mother of necessity."
- - Thorstein Veblen

Hi Tom,
I have read that most serious wood working injuries occur as a result of table saws. These are probably the most prevelant free standing machines in use except maybe the drill press. I am familiar with an individual who is single handedly trying to make table saws (among other machines) safe. Check out this site:

http://www.sawstop.com/video.htm

I think there are a lot of people out there that would use his device if they were aware of it.

Cyanide?! Hardening steel? Man.

As far as the most dangerous tools go, I can't think of a specific (they have all scared the cr*p out of me from time to time) But what sticks in my mind are the older tools we scrounge or inherit. A lot of these never had proper guards or the guards have been removed. Lost a heart shape chunck of scalp (it grew back) about the size of a dime to an old drill press. The spindle was exposed in a couple of places up through the the head casting and I leaned in a little too close to look down the hole. More embarassing than painful but that machine has a clear plastic guard on it, now. -Doug

My phone! I always makes blunders on jobs or even scrapping them after a conversation with a difficult client, now seriously the cut off machine & the bench grinder.....

Klox

Mine is a 3" fly cutter spinning at 2000 RPM on my mill!

My father has a 14" radial arm saw, with a 2' cross cut, 4HP motor. Scares the hell out of me every time!
I find his Planer/thicknesser rather scary too, pushing that wood over the rotating blades, hmm, what if the wood has a knot through it and snaps?!
edit, just realised you guys are gonna tell me to use a push stick aren't you!:(

That is unreal! I watched a couple of those videos on the web page and was shocked how quick that works! They should have that on all saw sold! Just unreal, I have never seen anything like that before!

That is amazing. I suppose the legal implications are huge, if the sensor system ever fails from old age or something.

Did anyone ever see that spoof on MAD tv about the "titanium work gloves"? The guy demonstrates how tough these gloves are by trying to cut his hand with a power saw, except, it does cut him. After the fact, then he realizes "These are my gardening gloves, my titanium gloves are over there on my toolbox".

Originally posted by HuFlungDung
That is amazing. I suppose the legal implications are huge, if the sensor system ever fails from old age or something.



Yeah, I hope your cell fone doesn't ring. :eek:

Pretty interesting stuff.

'Rekd

Toymaker if you look down in my sig line you will now understand why it's there. I had a serious injury back in Jan. because of the absence of my mind. I think complacency is the most dangerous thing in the shop and I have the scars to prove it.:(

Isfoils thank you for that link. That is the most impressive piece of safty equip I have ever seen. I am in the wood business and I use push sticks but I would sure like to have those on my bandsaw and table saw, and if applicable the jointer.

I wonder if that thing would work on a router bit??:rolleyes:

turmite

Hey, don't forget to factor in the cost of hot dogs for testing every once in a while. Or maybe Brat's on the BBQ and cycle the stock before it gets too old.:D

Chris

I worked several years ago in a fab shop that had this huge drill press with two smaller ones on each side. One day I'm drilling on a small one and the guy next to me on the huge one makes the mistake of wearing gloves while using the drill press. He instinctivly reached in to brush some chips off while the drill was still running with his gloved hand. He now only has four fingers on that hand, the bit caught his glove thumb, wrapped it up around the bit with his thumb inside. The drill never even slowed down as it pulled his thumb off. Very serious injury. I NEVER wear gloves around a drill press, or anything else that spins for that matter. Ron

Originally posted by cbcnc
Hey, don't forget to factor in the cost of hot dogs for testing every once in a while. Or maybe Brat's on the BBQ and cycle the stock before it gets too old.:D

Chris

Mmmm, how 'bout some Louisiana Hot Links.. :D

I was working at a shop where a manual mill guy got the sleeve of his smok wrapped around the spindle of a knee mill and twisted the smock sleeve so tight around his fore-arm that it seperated the mussle tissue. Several skin grafts later he had limited use of his arm.

Another guy in the same shop inserted a pem nut precicesly in the middle of his thumb. (Imagine the x-ray). He almost refused to go to the doctor, wanted to stay and work the rest of his shift. :rolleyes:

'Rekd

"I think complacency is the most dangerous thing in the shop and I have the scars to prove it."

I agree,and here is another in a single word.

FAMILIARTY, which quickly leads to the above.

We should run machines like we drive cars, defensively!

My friend is half the man he used to be, because of his table saw.

honestly our cnc scares me the most because of the student programmers.....you never now if somethings going to come flying or break a bit (its an old knee mill style unenclosed table)

the story about a smock getting caught in the spindle scares me.. i am often working with my lathe\mill when i have no business being around heavy equipment.. 4am, with a beer in 1 hand, a manual control in the other, etc.

my lathe really scares me. i can imagine my tool getting caught in the 3-jaw chuch and the whole mess flying right at me.

i also cant help but imagine the 10" radial blade on my mitre saw comming loose and comming right at me...

these visions actually plague me. ive gotten to the point where i wear my goggles even when drilling 1/8" holes in plexiglass....

spinning end mills scare the crap out of me, they like to grab things like nothing. that and my lathe with some horribly mounted steel or really big peices scare me the most. bandsaw, lol, well no probs there. at school the carbide chop saw scares the crap out of me, especially after I broke that bran new blade cutting some steel:O

Jon

Bandsaw:)
Drill Press:(
Table Saw:eek: :eek:

Well.
The scaryist pice of spinning hardware i use on a comment bases would have to be my drimmels.
Ever sice i broke a bit cutting through the side of a case the thing makes me cringh when i here it baug down for whatever reson.

The bit broke rickeshade off the desk flew straight up grased my forhead leaving a scratch and imbeded itself in my celing about half way. It's still there stuck in a 2x4 or somthing i cant seem to get it loos with pliers.

All tho nowadays im scard of ANYTHING with a belt.
A few years back i was helping my stepfather move ans set up a large genorator. (were not talking one of those lawnmore moter deals) This thang used a desil engen called a and i quote "Screaming jimmy"
it's loude!

I digress.
When we had moved the thing into place and wor starting to try and fire it up i was moving around it to stere clear of the exaust line. As i had reached the front of the engen my foot got cought on a root or somthing and i lost my balance. i found my self falling face first into the busnes end of a flywheel. i grabed for and cought the safty rails or so i thought right as i stood up my stepfather who was on the other side of the genorator and oblivious to my posision tried to crank it up. (And the dam thing sucked my left hand into the gering for the waterpump.)

I'ts amazing how time slows down when somthing like that hapens
i destinkly remember exaclty how many turns that thing made befor i got my hand free. i remember thinking to my self "It might be a good idea to scream about now" <-That is exacly the words that whent through my mind.

When he herd me scream he puld the ignition wires loos emeditly. i got my hand free only to realise a few seconds later that i was missing half my left index finger.

Wonce the emergincy trip was over and all was sed and done i am half a finger short and have a frozen joint on the finger next to it. a second more and id be missing 2 fingers

When we got back from the hospital i MADE my step dad go out and hit the starting on that thing one more time. would you belve it hadn't made one full revolution befor it roard to life.... that think could have taken off every finger on my left hand if it had done that!

So now whenever i'm around anything with a belt i subconchesly hold my hands behind my back
Bad eyeballs is one thing (yes im leagily blind) but loosing use of your hands and bad eyeballs is one hell of a nightmare.

put me into one hell of a funk for over a year that did. i had to lern how to type all over again.

my right hand still out runs my left most of the time.

This isn't shop related, but it's scary/stupid/funny..

'Rekd teh stupidity may end up being painful after all...

A picture is worth a thousand words they say, and it would take every last one of them to describe that idiot.

Unbelievable
I would have at least put one more brace back at the rear bumber :D

he's got two sticks in there now. isn't that like a belt and suspenders? :D

robotic regards,

Tom
= = = = =
I would live to study, and not study to live.
- - Francis Bacon

so... that guy is welding the full gastank, right?

One of my first jobs in an engineering shop was at a company that made pneumatic rams.

I didn't see this first hand but saw the aftermath and the repairs made to the factory so believe it as it was told!

Seems they were fitting up a large ram for testing, 6 inch ID by 9 feet long.

The shaft was from memory 2 inch dia by 10 feet long stainless steel.

"Someone" forgot to put the nut that holds the piston assembly to the shaft on, Testing consisted of cycling the ram with line pressure for a set time, usually with the ram horizontal (except for the very big units that were tested in a vertical rack)
You can imagine the shock when they hit GO and the shaft "left the building" through the roof!

They told me of the sheer panic while the awaited reentry!!! :D!

As luck would have it the shaft turned 90 degrees on it's way back down and landed on the roof causing an exit hole and a huge 10' long dent in the tin roof!

Really enjoyed reading this thread :).(good to see it's not just me that has a "BrainFart" from time to time.

Probably the worst one I've encountered happened about ten years ago where I work, there was a young kid pretty much straight out of school who was working on a press that punches out car panels, I'm not sure on the details but somehow he had his upper body between the dies when the thing cycled and it flattened him.
Another one more recently and thankfully far less serious but potentially could be very dangerous happend when someone was using a spring compressor to compress a suspension spring so he could fit the shock absorber. Somehow the spring escaped from the compressor, hit the floor at a great rate of knots, bounced up and hit the guy under the nose, broke his nose.
I know of another guy who was using a wire buff one day with no eye protection, a strand of wire flew out and went straight through his eye. It took about three months of absolute agony for the eye to recover as best it could. The rediculous part about it is that he openly admits that he still dose not bother wearing eye protection when using the bench grinder-IDIOT...

Thanks for sharing these stories, it helps to remind you of the importants safety. One of the tools that always scared me is the radial arm saw. I know two people who had s with them because the blade wasn't pushed all the way back and when they put a piece of molding in front of the blade, it caught and shot forward. One guy cut his hand in half, and the other open up his forearm. I won't allow a radial arm saw in my shop, only sliding compound saws.
One other thing, one of the carpenters I work with had a terrible with a tablesaw. He put in a dado blade in the saw and didn't put in a throat plate. When grooving a small piece of lumber, the saw yanked in the piece with his hand as well. He now has only 2 1/2 fingers on that hand.

One reminder I appreciate is the need for eye protection. Since I wear glasses and sometimes I don't wear eye protection. But when I hear these stories, it reminds my to stop what I am doing and get a face shield.

Speaking of table saws, i've seen one turn on without touching the switch. Not long after I'd changed the blade on it. Do not ever change a blade (or router bit) without first unplugging it. I never used to bother, but always do now.

Watched a guy at work turn on a 17" Leblond lathe on with the T wrench still in the chuck once.<- that was scary!

Always hated watching people hand crank start old tractors.

Scariest though->Have a friend who restored an old saw mill, 60" of exposed saw blade running off a belt drive from a tractor.It used a steel chain with 3" spikes to drive the log into the blade!<- I actually left the building for that one. It had no guards and half of it was made of wood!

After thought, the scariest things to see in a shop are the new guys that know it all!!

Maybe you guys have noticed but the word 'accident' doesn't appear when you type it in. Is there a reason for it?

I actually used it twice before but it doesn't appear unless I put it in quotes

Hand Prop a Plane? Bigger its than a tractor! Stumpy will never do that again!

Why do all too many otherwise "really smart-really sharp" guys have less than 10 fingers?
I try and let tools just scare me $%!#-less - so maybe I'm next - or maybe not. I call it respect - 'cause I don't stop using them.

BUT NEVER forget to wear the facemask, ear protection, and safety glasses!
(Not writen for you - for me)

Patrick: Awhile back "BL" (before laser) I wore glasses and while using a jigsaw to cut aluminium sheet I ended up with a chip in the eye!!

Off to the Eye and Ear hospital I went to have it removed with a stern warning that I neded to wear goggles over my glasses!

Next effort while wearing goggles over my glasses you guesses it! Happened again!! The chip arced up and into one of the vent holes on top bounced off the inside of my glasses lens and into my eye!

Back to the Eye and Ear I go and get blasted about not wearing goggles!

I explain then leave for home, A few months later same tool same thing same end result!! I see a Dr walking towards me and when he walks into a half open door and smacks himself in the forehead I couldn't help but laugh, The nurse looks at me and say "I don't know what you're laughing at he's YOUR doctor"!!

Again have the chip cut out return home and throw the jigsaw in the bin and buy a new one with a chip guard built in!

I used to work in a machine shop that turned big parts on big lathes, ever see a 3 foot chuck? They are huge. One of the larger parts was this 30 inch break drum about 16 inches deep, it was for some kind of logging rig. Don't know what it weighed, a lot. It was very round on the backside where you had to chuck it and they had to be chucked just right.

One night one of the newer guys was machining a pallete of them and all of a sudden kaboom it came loose blew the door off the lathe and landed right next to him. The whole shop jumped but that guy didn't even flinch! The guy was more scary than the tool.

Anyone see Norm do some unsafe stuff on the new yankee workshop?

Anyone ever see an inertia welder? It spins two parts in opposit directions at a few thousand rpms then slams them together.
Scary Stuff

Rob D

It is labeled cyanide! Holy S--T! Cyanide! What in the world was the previous guy doing with that?

If he wasn't using it to kill things with, it might have had something to do with plating. A lot of plating solutions are cyanide based.

Cyanides are also used in polymerisation reactions, like making styrofoam.

You were right to be concerned. Cyanide is probably going to kill you quicker than any other chemical known to man, including nerve gas.

About safety, I would say that perhaps the single most important piece of safety equipment would be a full face shield.

In my opinion safety glasses are virtually useless and shouldn't really be considered as safety equipment.

Safety goggles are okay, but they have a lot of problems. They steam up or get mucky quickly, and are a pain to clean because of the side protection. I have actually had chips of material move through the air vents in the goggles into my eyes before now. Goggles are not a very comfortable fit if they're on tight enough to be effective. Nore do goggles protect the rest of your face. Finally, if you wear glasses, putting goggles on can actually hurt, as the goggles press the frames into your skin.

Any disadvantage to a piece of safety equipment is going to reduce the chance of the user actually wearing it.

There are ways around some of the problems. For instance, corrective goggles. But realistically, I can ruin a pair of goggles in a few days. So I'm not going to pay 80 pounds for something that might end up broken after a week. Also, I have had things miss my eyes on a number of occasions, and instead, whack me across my face with enough force to cut or bruise me.

So, for me, a full face shield is by far the most comfortable and usefull piece of safety equipment. You can also get them with shaded lenses to protect your eyes from UV.

The only disadvantage I can think of with a full face shield is that it might lull the user into a false sense of security.

As for the most dangerous piece of equipment, I'd go with a Dremel. You can pull you arms off with industrial equipment, or blow yourself to bits, but you're always aware of this while you're using it.

A Dremel, though, sounds like a toy. Loaded up with an abrasive disc, it becomes a 30,000rpm shrapnel producer. If you shatter a disc on these things it comes off so quickly you can't even see it move. While you're busy crafting away on a piece of 15mm pipe with the toy like Dremel, one of the discs shatters and you loose and eye.

Something is only dangerous when you don't think it is.

Remember that most accidents involving tools are at home, not in the workplace.

I had it a couple of times while "enjoying" on the lathe that a chip struck me on the lip, burning a nice big blister! It sure makes kissing the missus a painfull job! LOL!!

Klox

Let's see, dangerous tools in my shop...

1. Foundry (molten Aluminum holds my attention pretty well!)
2. Table saw - I keep guards on when possible and hands far away from the blade.
2b. Circular saw, a lot like the table saw, but less tied down.
3. Welder - amps, bright lights, and hot metal to burn fingers when its done!
4. That clock on the wall! Haste causes a lot of incidents.

Scariest at the shop: Forklift drivers who have "other" things on thier mind.

Scariest at home: Table Saw / Radial Arm Saw and the water heater vent pipe that I keep banging my head on at least once a month for the past 15 years.

Murphy

What about the piece of brass that sits there all innocent....... little do you know how hot that puppy is =) Or my personal two favorites.... chuck wrench left in chuck ....or Tailstock hole not adequately drilled deep enough.... or at that.. TOO deep!


Epik

Scariest at home...... my beloved 045 AV super chainsaw....... Cuttin 8 inch Beech tree branch under pressure...... flung saw...... saw blade took off hat while cutting above my head...... I went with hittin the dirt missed 20 foot limb bein' pulled by my tractor to keep tension but manage to wrestle saw with one arm .... got right back up and did it to the next limb........ when the jub has to be done...... its gotta be done...... Cept this time The limbs didn't have the tension from the other half of the 80 foot tree log on them.

I've managed to get 2 steel splinters, and 1 aluminum chip in my eyes at various points in time. One of the steel splinters, I had on 2 pairs of saftey glasses, the spark bounced off my cheek and went up and under the goggles and glasses. I didn't even know anything happened until the next morning when I woke up with one eye swollen closed. I left work and had to ride my motorcycle with no depth perception to my wife's house( girlfriend at the time) and she took me to the hospital to have my cornea scraped, which was the roughest thing I've ever had to endure, and the liquid they put in your eye to numb it up feels like brake cleaner. The best part is the Dr. has me on this table, and while he's holding my eye open with a black light on to see the rust orbit which has formed around the splinter he says to me right before he goes in " Don't move a F*cking muscle!!... if you flinch or move in the slightest way, you're going to have much bigger problems" needless to say... I didn't move.
As for things that happened while I was present, I've had my mill grab a rag while machining steel, and keeping the extra cutting oil at bay.
The scariest thing was my friend was machining some aluminum on the lathe in our shop, and the cut was running right up to the Chuck, well he was taking to deep of a pass, which makes the power feed on the tool post turret hard to shut off due to the torque on the lead screw, and it got way to close to the chuck for comfort, he slammed the lever down to prevent destroying the cutting bit, and in the process I heard " SNAP " then he started jumping around like MC hammer, he got his right pinky finger under the lever when he pushed it down, snapping his finger (between the edge of the bench and the lever ) in two places in one shot. He reset the tooling and went right on working, wasn't until a week went by that he went to the doctor's, had an exray done and found out he broke his finger, which took months to heal up correctly.

I'll leave out the sunburn from tig welding with goggles on, yes you do end up looking like a raccoon... lol.

-Art

not sure how many of you seen this one but it's sure is funny :)

so. i hate shop accidents. please be carefull! DO NOT LET YOUR SLEVES GET CAUGHT IN ANY SPINNING PARTS!! Also, USE A F-ING VICE, OR CLAMPS. NOT HANDS

. heres a hint for you guys, checkout the newish movie "the machinist". its a smaller indipendant film and you will probably greatly enjoy it. i did. it is a paranoia inducing, and the story is allrite. i like alot of indi films and i wanted to see this one badly because it combined my interests in machining, with my interests in film.

robert.

(Collision Repair Shop) I was building a mobile truck rack to hold truck beds @ work while the veh or a bedside is under repairs, replacement or refinish. I had thought that I was finished with all of the welds and had took off my welding gloves. Upon the final inspection of the rack, I had found one inch and half weld on a piece of angle iron that I had missed. I figured no big deal and turned the welder back on. I did not put my gloves back on thinking that this would take but just a few seconds...what a STUPID thing to do...a piece of slag popped from the weld and had landed on my gold wedding ring, not yet knowing this, I pulled my hand back thinking it had was just a burn to the skin but the pain was still unbelievable...I shook my hand so hard that a watch that I had on came off and broke apart when it hit the floor. I then saw the small 1/16 piece of slag had welded itself to my ring. The slag and its heat had traveled thru the entire gold ring almost instantly. I quickly tried getting the ring off...and in doing so, it peeled the skin off for about 2/3 of my ring finger along with it. I do know that wearing any type of jewelry is dangerous around tools at any time...I was a line tech for 15 years before getting into management and although I had not forgotten this rule, I simply ignored it thinking that it would never happen to me. COMPLACENCY and being overconfident = careless, in any given situation and can be very dangerous.

I also had a strut spring compressor have one of its arms break off, releasing the spring under its full tension...the spring had only grazed across the top of my right hand, but it probably would have taken my whole hand off with it, had it been directly over the top of it. This spring actually flew straight up and at a slight angle until it had hit the 14 foot ceiling of the shop, bounced off it and went for about another 30 foot before richocheting off of a cars hood and it finally stopping after hitting a wall...thankfully no one else was in its path when this happened. I was lucky that it did not break any bones...but my whole hand was black & blue for about 2 weeks. The owner of the shop had the metal of the compressor checked and it was found to be fatiqued in the area that it broke. Was it a design failure? Your guess would be as good as mine...the purpose in mentioning this is to only remind you that safety checks should always be performed before using any type of equipment that has the potential to cause you bodily harm or possibly even death.

If you have read this reply in its entirety...I do hope that by reading over my mistakes and mishaps, it will possibly jog your memory the next time that maybe your thinking "It will just take a second" or not thinking of the possible dangers in whatever you may be doing.

the most dangerous peice of equipment I got in the shop or at home is........ the old faithfull Crainium.

lets face it boys and girls no matter how much safty equipement you have it that big old widget machine you were standing next to lets go and your in its path your going to the hospital or worse.

you got to be as carfull as you feel is neccesary but it only take that one mistake at the wrong time and its done.

I have fallen into a running fanbelt, had a table saw suck me into the blade, radiator hose blew up in my face, hand caught in fan blade, lathe chuck hit me in the head. splinters in the eye and a shifter lever threw the foot... the list gets longer and none of those were permenent injuries!

and with the exception of the hand in the fan blade. I had all the proper safety equipent on. I aint dead or missing any fingers! so some of it worked.

The splinter in the eye happened while hiking and I had glasses on!

if you consider the amount of accidents I am unlucky, but, if you consider how little damage I have taken I am very lucky.

so be carfull and wear you glasses and keep you hands clear but keep it real! Life is dangerous but I would trade it for nothing (nuts)

Michael t.

or is that "Iwouldn't trade it for nothing".. doh!

one of these days I going to hav ta learn to typo!

:violin:

Most modern day concrete trucks (the ones that deliver ready mixed concrete to the job site) have their bowl (?) driven directly from a geared down hydraulic pump but previously they were driven by a huge chain that went around to circumference of the bowl and the chain was connected to a car motor and automatic transmission. These chains were about 100mm (4") pin to pin centres and about 75mm (3") wide. I was taking off one of these chains one day and instead of using a puller I decided to punch out the joiner link with a hardened steel punch and hammer. Well you guessed it. Hardened steel against hardened steel doesn't go. My apprentice suddenly screamed from 3 metres away and there inbedded in his leg near his knee was a good size lump of chain link. By the time we got him to the hospital the piece of steel had worked its way down the artery and ended up near his ankle! Didn't I feel bad. Lucky it wasn't an eye.
Skippy

The nastiest thing I ever saw in a shop. I saw a fella try to hand choke a running cummons diesel engine, sucked his hand in to the wrist and we had to take him with the manifold on his arm to the hospital where it was cut off due to swelling of all the broken bones.

The manifold or the hand?
Skippy

Hmm, I've got some tins of Sodium Cyanide in the shed for case hardening steel, I'll get some photo's for you guys so you know what to look for and the usage and safety instructions.

I've used it a bit, It's not kryptonite and won't strike you dead as soon as you open the lid, I figure as long as your sensible, follow instructions and use it outside you ought to be fine.

cheers.

Hmm, I've got some tins of Sodium Cyanide in the shed for case hardening steel, I'll get some photo's for you guys so you know what to look for and the usage and safety instructions.

I've used it a bit, It's not kryptonite and won't strike you dead as soon as you open the lid, I figure as long as your sensible, follow instructions and use it outside you ought to be fine.

cheers.

and dont forget...

The standard cyanide antidote kit uses a small inhaled dose of amyl nitrite.

:cheers:

Amyl Nitrate?

If I remember right, My friends and I used Amyl Nitrate as the antidote for all kinds of things while we were in high school ;)

You mean "That" Amyl Nitrate?

Amyl Nitrate?

If I remember right, My friends and I used Amyl Nitrate as the antidote for all kinds of things while we were in high school ;)

You mean "That" Amyl Nitrate?



Amyl nitrite is a rush. It is used as an antidote for cyanide poisoning. However the a local handbook on "Hazardous Chemicals in the Laboratory" says that it should not be administered unless the patient loses consciousness.

And yes...I mean that Amyl Nitrite!

As promised, here are some pics of my stash of cyanides...
apologies for making the thread image heavy.

"Hardite" works well enough, and I'm lead to believe it's a lot less poisonous than the 'Liquid Carburizer" / Sodium Cyanide. It's a light grey powder that melts to a black glassy coating on the steel, and bubbles away cheerfully impregnating the surface with the goodness of carbon and nitrogen.

The red tin is welded shut from the factory.. I guess thats a childproof container!

I can copy the text if anyone wants it.. the antidotes are Amyl Nitrite (trite, not trate), and Calcium Gluconate.. I believe glucose in vast quantities is an effective measure as well, so if you smell bitter almonds, pour a gallon of raw cordial down your throat.

cheers,

How about when I was sawing a two foot by two foot three quarter thick sheet of plywood that kicked out of my craftsman 220v industrial table saw (made in the 70's aint nothing stopping this puppy) clobbering my 4 year old son.

Heh, how about a flycutter 12" dia with no guard holding a Single Point Diamond Tool spinning at 6000 RPM machining flat aluminium parts held on with Tippex (typing correction fluid)- because I need everything precisely balanced all diameters are machined to a high polish so you can't tell if it's spinning or not by looking at it!

Most dodgy stuff? my old boss was using an angle grinder to remove some old lenses from a bit of hardware- he's done about 30 or so, dust everywhere, before I found out that the lenses he was grinding were coated in Thorium Fluoride... Thorium 232 is more tightly controlled than Uranium or Plutonium by the H&SE from a contamination point of view. A quick check with an alpha detector scared the pants off him!

Heh, how about a flycutter 12" dia with no guard holding a Single Point Diamond Tool spinning at 6000 RPM

No.... but thanks for asking :D

Here's a few more doozies:

Scott

That forklift one brings back memories of changing light bulbs in a warehouse that I used to work in.

Forklifts seem to be frequently mis-used - .....but how about front end loaders?

Scott

LOL,LOL,LOL Nessesity is the mother of invention or are we just too lazy to do it the right way.

I guess to keep in form with the title/subject of this thread - I would have to say that the most dangerous thing in the shop is called a Co-Worker. You may have a few in your shop. Heck - you might even BE the Co-Worker!

Co-Workers come in all sizes and levels of complexity. I have witnessed co-workers closing extension cords in doors leading into an operating Class1, Div1 (explosion proof) environnment.

I have seen Co-Workers use a cutting torch on empty acetone drums that were capped.

I have seen Co-Workers cut through the Oxy/Acet hose on a smoke wrench and then light the cut hose on fire and not know what to do to stop the fire.

I have seen Co-Workers fall asleep operating machines, fall into the machine and wake up with several compound fractures.

Co-Workers are dangerous. Keep your distance.

Scott

By far the jointer.

There are some cuts that you need to take with this machine where you are directly over the blades pushing downward on the wood while moving it alone forward. Sometimes that can't be avoided, it's just the way the machine is designed. Given a thick piece of clear clean wood this isn't a problem. However, if those blades were to hit a hidden knot or nail and throw the piece of wood there would be nothing between your hands and 3 six inch blades rotating at 1800rpm, with gravity pulling you towards the blades.

In a nutshell though, any machine can be dangerous. I read some posts where people have said a particular machine "scares the hell out of" them. Rather than being scared of a machine, I have always tried to exerise great respect for it (even the smallest simplest machines). Scared can cause accidents... respect can prevent them.

Being scared of a machine is a good thing, that means you respect it, you will be careful when using it. When you are no longer scared of it, you get used to it, careless and thats when accidents occur.

MXTRAS, those piccies are just like wow! wrong! lol makes my feet all itchy just looking at them! :)

Other scary stuff I've machined- Hand Grinding: Arsenic Trisulphide (we had to take Vitamin C all day- apparently this slows down the body's uptake of Arsenic). The chemists wouldn't even come into the lab when we were doing it! I don't think you'd be allowed to machine it today.

JDEBUCK, spot on dude "It will just take a second" or not thinking of the possible dangers in whatever you may be doing.
Setting up the diamond tool for my X- Z lathe in the X plane can take hours- it's got to be sub micron positioned. So... I had a good idea, I bolted a X20 microscope with a right angled prism to the Z Slide to look at the tool and focus right on the tool tip. Now if I could find out the distance from the microscope to the Spindle centre I could setup tools real quick :)

Next I stuck a HeNe laser (class 3B, 5mW output) on the X Bed, stuck a beamsplitter infront of it to get a dot back to a camera and monitor then another X20 objective in front of it and focused down on the centre of a part I had turned. The Laser was thus at X0.

Feeling pretty clever, I moved the laser over to the microscope ojective on the X Slide and you can probably see where this is going.

Obviously I couldn't wear Laser Goggles because I wouldn't be able to see the dot down the objective so i stuck a pile of Neutral Density Filters over the eyepiece and removed them one at a time till I could.

Well, the laser focused on the back of my retina and boiled off a bit right in the concentrated bit (fovea?). There was no pain, just a really weird feeling like "wow WTF was that!". Went to the hospital for a fluoroscene angiogram where they put them weird drops in your eye that make you look spaced out and your wee glows (no kidding!)- they said it was permanent damage- it's not a great deal, could have been worse, but now if I look at a straight line say on a bit of paper with one eye it has a break in it!

Now I had been working with lasers for years, know what they were capable of, know the difference between CO2 laser damage and HeNe damage.. everything

I thought it would "only be a second"... nothing could happen.. maybe... ahh try it anyway... it'll be ok. Silly me

Be safe!

Imancarrot -

Sounds like amateur Lasic surgery gone wrong! :eek:

Scott

A couple more of my favorite safety related photos -

Scott

The funny part about that idiot on the ladder in the pool with the corded drill is that he is wearing safety goggles!! HA HA !! :drowning:

Awesome! I sent all those piccies to my brother who is Health & Saftey manager for a few hospitals he was killing himself laughing he says. Any more plz? :)

First, Being new here let me say Hi to all you folks, have been lurking for a few weeks and have been impressed with the knowledge and civility around here.

Now on to the scary machines...The shop I'm currently working in I would say the tablesaw has to takes the prize...probably one of the newest and most feared piece of equipment in the shop and we have machines dating back to the early 1900's.

But to twist the original question just a bit I would say the scariest machine I've ever dealt with(but at a different shop) Was a big scary Wotan "Rapide 3" Horizontal mill.

was a late 70's NC control that was only "reliable" enough to use as a pushbutton manual. The W axis only worked in rapid and would only stop with the E-stop button. The Y axis was the same but it could be ran in rapid for short bursts, anything over a few inches at a pop and you'd better be ready to slap that big red button.
The Z axis(quill) was fairly reliable. It would occasionally throw a punch but usually gave fair warning.
To top it all off not all the buttons worked all the time and sometimes one would have to hit the button a few times before it would work.

Any way to avoid rambling on.... after running this machine for a month or so with few problems I became fairly comfortable with the control panel and got into the old habit of pushing buttons blind. So it happened one morning I touched off a 2" facemill with my Z and blindly shut off the Z and hit the Y and fast rapid to get off the part then GO .
I found myself facing a 200" length of 4x6 steel tube headed straight for me and quickly found the answer to the question of why there was a great big E-Stop button way down by the floor. Made it out unscathed only a C-clamp glanced across my back and got some weird sort of respect in the shop since I had my first crash on the Wotan.
(disclaimer)I did get told when I got hired that it was a dangerous machine and I would crash it.... and it was..and I did, but I grew kind of fond of the old *****


It was the epitomy of a scary machine..and last I heard still is... The guy I trained before I left liked to take a shorcut between the quill and the part to get from one side of the machine to the other, couldn't understand why I got so pissed when he did
...he learned..no pain just a close call.

all these posts about saws make me flinch, I have always been scard out of my mind to use all power tools but I feel thats part of the respect and the fear helps keep you on your toes. There has to be some level of comfort to operate well but I have seen nails threw hands hand drills threw fingers laders to the face then face to floor even a simple open ended wrench to teh forhead resulting in a cracked skull. I feel the worst machine of all is us, people, after all were the ones who built them, and its always that one thing that we all do hundred of times and its all ways the same untill that one day where it changes. Case and point I for my job cut thin plastic sheets and anyone who has used these sheets knows that they come with a protective sheeting on both sides. I was routing a big square and the bit decided to take the plastic sheeting with itholding on to the square it was cutting the plastic decided to take my glove with it, thankfully the glove came off and the bit being only an 1/8" Diameter snaped befor any damage was done, to comfortable with it, bad idea. I keep the bit with the plastic on it as a reminder that it only takes one revolution to start and at 18000 RPM that one revolution wont take long.

scariest thing ever happened to me in my buddies home machine shop was when we were making 4000 stainless aircraft rivets, we had fashioned a homemade stock feeder to help automate the process. we had the 10 foot feed "tube" of this thing proped up and strapped to a hand truck out in the driveway. while we were away his wife returned from the store and moved the feeder out of the way to carry groceries into the house, then had pushed the feeder back to where it had been without rethreading the last 4 feet of 1/2 stainless stock back into the feeder. needless to say when i turned the lathe back on, it became a 8 foot multi horsepower weedeater.
the worse part of this is with a large 3 phase rotory converter running in the background i couldnt hear the stainless wipping around, and it was going so fast that i couldnt see it either (at night with florescent light only). the lathe however began shaking oddly so i stepped back to look things over and my buddy starts wildly gesturing then darted over and jerked me out of the way before i could move into the spinning rod which was no more than 20 inches to my left. with the weight and speed of that rod at the end of that 4 foot radius, im sure any sort of contact would have been lethal, and at the very least crippling. moral of the story. carry the groceries in for the wife i guess....

if I look at a straight line say on a bit of paper with one eye it has a break in it!
I thought the brain corrected so it was harder to realize this.

Eye (hehe), I thought that too but it's still there like 5 years later- if I look at an "O" there's bits missing depending on which part of the "O" I'm looking at.

It's not a problem if I use two eyes, only if I close my left one.

I found myself facing a 200" length of 4x6 steel tube headed straight for me and quickly found the answer to the question of why there was a great big E-Stop button way down by the floor. Made it out unscathed only a C-clamp glanced across my back and got some weird sort of respect in the shop since I had my first crash on the Wotan.

Ever think Lunatic and I might have loved this story?

Speaking of weird sort of respect and crashing machines. The old shop I worked at had a tradition. When a machine crashed (not all that often, usually a big grinder spitting out a part (all possitioned so they threw parts at the wall... )) all 35 workers would pause, grab a hammer or convinient chunk of steel and start hammering on a metal table or beam. Total cacaphony for a minute or so. As you said a right of passage more or less.

Dude, I got most of the parts to start assembling my CNC table. Too bad ur so far away. You could spit out thye first part.

My ring is the thing I worry every day. It comes off and goes in my change pocket first thing.

I used to turn wood. Getting up close and personal with a hunk of maple spinning at 1500 or so is real interesting. That big sharp piece of steel in your hand is real apt to catch something and turn into a projectile. Not to mention the centers are really just barely hanging on by like 1/4 inch of material.

Band saws are bad. They are deceptively slow, quiet and not really scary. But man, they'll take a finger off in a hot second.

My Bridgeport scares me now that I have the CNC working. That's a ton of power to be moving on it's own. As I get better with the code, I feel better about it.

Best,

I lost the tip of my right ring finger to a jointer/planer when I was about 14. I was interrupted while working and in that moment of inattention, it was gone forever. An important lesson was learned...

The worst accident I've been involved in occurred while I was turning a large counterbalance weight for a telescope that my neighbor was building. I was facing a very large chunk of steel when my neighbor came over after work to see how it was going. I stepped away from my lathe to greet him and before I could stop him he leaned over the spinning lathe to look and in an instant his tie became caught in the spinning chuck. I lunged for the e-stop but the tie tore in two and he only received a small bump on the forehead from hitting the plexiglass chip guard. However, that's not the end of the story...

My lathe has a variable speed drive with an electric brake and hitting the e-stop activates it. I had used it several times without incident but this time I had about 60 lbs. of steel in the 40 lb. chuck. The large inertia and the sudden stop caused the chuck to unscrew from the headstock and 100 lbs. of spinning steel was now loose. The assembly landed on the ways and promptly spun off onto the floor-landing on my neighbor's foot. It broke over a dozen bones and it peeled all the skin off the top of his foot (he was an office type worker and was only wearing loafers) before skittering across the floor of my garage and out the garage door and into the street. My neighbor couldn't walk for about 4 months but at least his face didn't impact the spinning chuck or it might have been worse.

Another lesson learned...

Bill

I lost the tip of my right ring finger to a jointer/planer when I was about 14
Which brings me to a question... what tools do you/don't you let your kids use? (Or for the younger ones, which tools were you forbidden to use and until when?)

More on-topic, my dad told me one of his friends cut off an arm with some machine (forgot the name) with a big exposed blade. They reattached it and, after proper surgery and time, it went back to normal. Still... arm falling to the floor = :eek:

Jointer fer sure! I bought one to plane corian, and after about one attempt using some imaginative fingerboards i said *##k this! and sold it the next week. Didnt even mind losing money on it. Was real glad to have it out of the shop.

Ever think Lunatic and I might have loved this story?

Dude, I got most of the parts to start assembling my CNC table. Too bad ur so far away. You could spit out thye first part.


Sorry Dude, I would've thought for sure I told you about my adventures with the "Big Scary Machine"You would've really liked that one. Everyday (when it ran) was an adventure in cheating death...Flames shooting out from the motors or instantly filling the building with electric smoke. It was a really cool job. Make sure I tell you about my new adventures in high speed 3 axis milling with a really bad programmer.

AS far as your machine..Well you just never know; I do have that gypsy thing stuck in my DNA and I've pretty much used up all of northern New England and the southern 3/4's of the east coast I just find offensive.
So I guess it's time to start working my way inland

At work the band saw scares me the most because your fingers get the closest to the 'kill zone' than anywhere else, but at home it's my table saw, I don't use it much but when I do all I hear is the sound of the wind coming off the blade. It really scares the **** out of me.

had an openator who was famous for crashing the virtical mills , at least 2-3 times a week i was forever fixing his mess up , one day he came to me and said he messed up the pallet changer , ,so i went over , when i looked inside the machine the 3/4 em didnt look right , at the time the light in the mc was burnt , since i was used to this idiot breaking everything he touched i decided to get a better look at this endmill so i grabbed the tool holder to turn the tool , turns out the spindle was spinning at 8000rpm for no reason that i m aware of , but i got lucky because i was reaching for the tool itself and decided to give the holder a spin to see the other side , at 8000 rpm the tool looked inadament it was just at the right speed , with the light off and the noise in the shop i couldn t hear the already near silent spindle turning
my fingers took a thumping and that moron was close to a thumping as well , i think the rest of my body was tingling more than my throbbing fingers , TOO CLOSE


recently i was holding a 60 pound part in a lathe chuck on the vertical mill , i was reaming 1" blind holes ,and the reamer packed up with chips and when the machine was homing it took the part with it , i hit the e stop and had this thing spinning at a couple hundred rpm at eye level before it lauched it to the back of the mc

REAMERS SCARE ME and so do morons

Jointer fer sure! I bought one to plane corian, and after about one attempt using some imaginative fingerboards i said *##k this! and sold it the next week. Didnt even mind losing money on it. Was real glad to have it out of the shop.

Running corian on a jointer has to make a LOT of noise. :eek: A good push block with a jointer is mandatory.

What's scary? A "Yoohoo" bottle... Seriously scary. Let me explain...

Several years ago, my wife and I used to car pool to work together. We headed out to the car one afternoon (we both worked odd shifts), heading to her '96 Escort station wagon. The sun was bright, and it was around 90 degrees out. As we walked up to the car, it was "sparkling" inside. I commented to my then girlfriend, "That's weird, looks like glitter". The escort had the cargo cover (flap of vinyl) pulled out, between the back seat and the rear hatch. It was sparkling. Hmmm. We opened the doors to get in, and the car was "sparkling" everywhere. The seats were covered in shards of glass. Upon closer inspection, there were 2 pieces of glass embedded in the headliner, one about 1 1/4" in diameter, the other about 1/2" in diameter. There were scrapes all around the plastic at the floorboard of the passenger side front seat. On the floorboard laid flat upside down was a piece of a Yoohoo label and some pieces of glass attached. It had EXPLODED, completely and totally. The glass scrapes all over the plastic apparently where from when the bottle exploded, tearing the plastic as the gazillion pieces blew outward. The sparkling on the cargo cover? Glass splinters. The whole car was covered inside with fine pieces of glass, everywhere.

My wife has a bad habit of leaving unfinished drinks in the car. She had left a half-filled glass bottle of Yoohoo in there, with a metal cap. Dairy product, it will ferment. Sunny hot days. It was an accident waiting to happen, a time bomb, if you will.

What made it so scary? What if someone had been IN there when that happened? What if merely slamming the door shut to head to work would have caused that bottle to grenade?

I bet it sounded like a gunshot when it went off.

Tool-wise, I fear the innocuous Dremel w/ cut-off wheel. I've broken lots of those wheels. The first one was the scariest. Now, I stay out of the "shatter zone" when using it.

I try to think about what I'm doing and make every effort to hold something or position myself in such a way as to minimize any potential dangers. I stand to the side of the tablesaw as much as possible. I have my sleeves rolled up always, no jewelry. No smock (I'm not in a shop), no gloves. No distractions (cell phone, wife, kids, radio, etc). No beer.

I figure if the machine I'm working with is dedicated enough to do the work I'm having it do for me, the least I can do is to be dedicated to every moment of its use totally and completely. Tools have their own purpose, and by that purpose, their own mind. They do a task, typically cutting something. That's all they do, that's all they know. They don't listen to music, they don't drink, they're perfectly focused on their specific task. We are absolutely required to pay attention.

Be safe, be smart, take precautions.

Gotta be the tablesaw. Just went through a nightmare kickback and made it with all fingers and toes intact. Never, ever, ever, ever draw a panel back across a spinning blade no matter how tired you are. Drew blood this time.

I really try to focus on safety when Im working on my shop, Ive never had anything really bad happen, and I intend to keep it that way.

Its pretty pitiful, but the scariest moment Ive ever had with power tools was probably grinding on a piece of probably .25" round steel in shop class in high school on a bench grinder. I wasnt nearly as respectful of the power of machines back then, and the grinder ripped the length of metal out of my fingers, and fired it out the back of the machine out those round "exhaust" ports some grinders seem to have. Luckily the teacher had forseen things like that happening, and there was a bent sheet of steel behind the grinder as a guard, the piece of metal hitting it sounded like a bullet.

Again it sounds pitiful, but the only real injury Ive ever recieved while working that shook me a bit was getting one of those 3 foot or so metal levels dropped on my head from about 8 feet up while I was laying on the floor bolting an equipment cabinet down. That gashed open my forehead and left me pretty dazed.

What was really irritating is that the guy that dropped the level on me knocked a ratchet off another equipment cabinet a few days later, I was in the exact same position but the ratchet missed my face by 6 inches or so. The guy was let go a few days after that for accidently shutting off a running cellular station.

I don't like electricity. I have a friend who was "jolted" by 40000 volts and lots of amps. As in town substation volts and amps. Chap in the control room swiched off the wrong substation. He remembers being wheeled into the hospital and then waking up later on in the day. He has a scar on his arm from when his wristwatch had melted but nothing else. He's fine now and we used to joke by asking him to tell us which one's a live wire in a bundle sticking out the wall. Of course you can tell by the colours (or the tester) but he'd touch each one in turn and proclaim "this one!" with a smile and we'd all break out in laughter. He once saw a colleague fried by 70000 volts at 2 meters height and when he hit the floor half his body mass was missing. The unavoidably funny bit here is he took out a tape measure (yes, your bog standard metal tape measure) to measure the distance between two live, BUZZING terminals.

As far as machines are concerned currently I'm afraid of my router the most and whenever my cnc is running I hold the extension cord in my hand so I can yank it in case the router decides to run after me across the room or something.

I hold the extension cord in my hand so I can yank it in case the router decides to run after me across the room or something.
Or becomes self-aware, who knows... :)
Last time I used a dremel, just the sound scared me. Of course, that was some time ago, I was (am?) a chicken and now I use gloves & glasses. I still dislike hand drills, though.
I guess holding the workpiece manually at the beggining of the routing is not reccomendable, then : P

eeek. gloves around spinning bits is something to consider carefully...

:rolleyes: Hey, you guys are making me think a lot about things I do... Sharing like this is well worth while. I think this thread is where a lot of us need to spend some time and ponder a bit. Thanks to all who go and do it here... you're doing it well talking about the safety stuff.... read'n on... (group)

Now days believe it or not the scariest thing to me is small metal shavings.And while I hate to sound like a candy ass its true.I had atiny I mean tiny sliver stick in my ring finger and cause blood poisining.I was in the hospital for over a week.My finger swolr to about 1 1/4 let me tell ya it was the worst pain I've ever had.I dont think it would have hurt any worse if I'd cut it off.

Now days believe it or not the scariest thing to me is small metal shavings.And while I hate to sound like a candy ass its true.I had atiny I mean tiny sliver stick in my ring finger and cause blood poisining.I was in the hospital for over a week.My finger swolr to about 1 1/4 let me tell ya it was the worst pain I've ever had.I dont think it would have hurt any worse if I'd cut it off.

Athree weeks ago i had one in my eye waited two days to go to med clinic hoping it would come out by itself, when i got to the med clinic they said rust had already started forming they had to take it out with a sharp needle if that did not work they use a small dremel like tool, a tiny bit that they could not get outwas left in and they said the body should desolve the rest in time. For over a week my eye hurt, watering and very sensitive to light, I'm glad it is 100% now and I got my 20/20 back.

Eeeeew! that is just horrible! steel chips in your eye... makes my toes curl up just thinking about it!

:rolleyes: Man o man.... I hurt and it wasnt my eye.... Now, not to preach, eye protection is cheap... Eyes arent... I dont want anyone to hurt... glad your ok, please be safe and use eye protection... Ok, enough of the sermon stuff. Thanks for being transparent and sharing... You have helped me... and I am sure others who read.... this... Big Deal....yep, now safety protection is a little deal if you use it, so it don't become a BIG DEAL if you don't. :boxing: joel.

I have ear protection and safety goggles....but to hell with that! First things Im buying for my workshop now is a full face shield and respirator....maybe (Probably) a chainmail apron...cheers folks.

The most scary thing I now own is my 16" Electric Chainsaw. As I told my better half two days ago, I 'had' to buy it, it was eeesntial! ;)

I dont own a van and had to move a mountain of props that I had built for a show her theatre school was putting on, so it was either buy something to chop them all up (They were finished with) or pay the same to hire a van. I bought a chainsaw :D

Was going to get a sawzall....bad idea....glad the guy in the shop only mentioned their more expensive ones, it would have taken me all night! So I bought the chainsaw along with more safety goggles and earmuffs because I didnt have anything with me. I also bought an extension lead then found that the chainsaw came with 12m of lead anyway. :(

A quick skim through the instruction leaflet and I was away....at least until the chain came off....then I spent 20min reading the leaflet properly to see how to put it back on. That was an interesting experience....chopping away on a busy city street, then I hear a weird scraping noise and look down to see no chain on the saw. I never used one of these and had never seen one being used so I kinda stood there for about 10sec checking that I was in one piece, then looked nervously around the street for the dismembered bodies of passers by! Then gingerly looking down I noticed the chain hanging from the saw...oops! Glad the manufacturers foresaw that eventuality before the chainsaw tried it. :)

Anyway, I got the job done in one piece although I certainly respected the chainsaw even more afterwards, went home, and ditched it (By ditched I mean cleaned, oiled, carefully repacked and stored on a shelf :) ) in the garage. I gave the instructions a proper read through then and became more familiar with it. Im nervously looking forward to using it again!

Moral of the story: Chainsaws demand respect. Before I use it again Im buying a chainmail apron or sawproof clothes. It cut the wood like the proverbial knife through butter and I have visions of it going in one side of me and out the other!!!

....Was going to get a sawzall....bad idea....So I bought the chainsaw...

When you are cutting up wood which may have nails, screws or bolts in general it is a case of chainsaw = bad; sawzall = good. Sawzall may be a bit slower but you can get demolition blades designed for cutting through metal that may be in the wood. Hitting a piece of metal (nail, screw) with a chainsaw blade is very rough on the blade and can lead to very sharp fragments of teeth flying off.

this one really scared me

this was on holiday over in morocco and my first experience machining i contracted the guy to make some copper parts and he needed me too stick around cause my intensions weren't all clear too him due too my limited designing skills and a language barrier anyway we got along quite well so i started helping him more and more and at a surtent time he asked me too come take a look if he was doing a good job

right now he was milling the outside of the part to final dimensions but to be able to reach this part it didn't really alow for proper holding/clamping and it was bolted down with bolts and washers 4 of them as 2 on each side so when i bent over too get a closer look at my almost finished part i decided too just blow some chips away that were in the way when the unimaginable happened
as he reversed his cutting direction <---- to ---> the part sprung loose from two of the bolts, bent one and just miracally was grabbed by the last intact bolt leaving the workpiece lookin me straight in the eyes on a 5inch distance with a grim smile saying i would a loved wiping that smile of a your face boy

the lesson learned ;serious clamping is a MUST if you wanna go home in 1piece and never trust a metalcutting machine while running with your life but turn off the spindle before even coming close with bodyparts

:cheers: One time years ago when i was operating a farm, i hired a couple of local boys to help me, big strapping types used to doing work. The were familuar with chain saws and work as was I. We were working on dropping some trees to cut up for winters fire wood as we heated and cooked with wood.

This tree we were working on is near another tree which had a widow maker way up high and we did not see it. The older boy was trimming the downed tree reading it for slicing to firebox length when one of the trimmed limbs I was working on fell and hit the tree with the widow maker in it. The broken limb from up high fell and hit the llimb the boy was working on and it took the saw into his thigh. it sliced it open better than a surgean could do. It layed it open so you could see the covering to the mussles (sp) protected by a thin layer of white flesh.

We got him to the hospital as no major veins were cut. Moral... now where is the moral...

Well, i have cut a lot of wood in my 60 plus years and i can tell you, chain saws are one of the worst (and handiest) pieces of equipment ever made for safety, their is just no perfectly safe way to use them. JUST REMEMBER, their is no mercy in a chain saw and no situation is safe, NEVER. Wear every piece of safety equipment you can find and the cost of safety is never to high, NEVER!

Oh, the boy, well he is a man and I believe the injury never kept him from starting foot ball and as a running back, he did quite well that year... :boxing: :cheers:

Hi guys im new to this forum.I would like to discuss the matter of th E-stop button(you know,that big red round button that says push me!).Do you believe that an E-stop button should cut the power completely off(spindles-controler-motors),hard cut off,or do you think that its ok only to use the E-stop of the cnc program?Any idea will be usefull as two minds are better than one.
Thank you!
Kolokithas

:cool: In my day, we were required to actually test each feature of every piece of equipment for operation, maintenance and safety operation. Now without knowing your situation (my reservation and caution to you), I would test the features in a non-working situation, in other words, if it is a mill (example), turn it on and give it a command and when it gets to going, hit the emergency stop button....TEST! Next, do the same again and test the software botton....TEST!

This done with some prior planning and thought should allow you to reach a reasonably sound answer. Otherwise, my reservation and caution to you is - if we know no more information than we know now about your situation, there really is no sound answer, just generalities.... :boxing: no not that.... this :cheers: isn't life good when your laying back with a xx with some lime on the rim of the mug....hummmm! One of the days, someone is gonna ask what is XX! :cheers:

kolokithas, referance the e-stop, look at these two threads:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11219

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17128

I would like to discuss the matter of th E-stop button(you know,that big red round button that says push me!).Do you believe that an E-stop button should cut the power completely off(spindles-controler-motors),hard cut off,or do you think that its ok only to use the E-stop of the cnc program?


How important is it to you that it stops every time you push the button, 100% of the time, no matter what might occur? :)

The lack of power should cause instanious (sp) brakes....big brakes... I think that if you want to spend the money, brakes can be put on just about anything....BRAKES - wooooooaa! Everything in life has some risks, even fear so great, you wont start... Doing this is one of the best things that can be done, talking it over with others who have been down the road before....I think your question is on target, look at all the factors, but remember, safety is cheap, lack of safety can be without cost limits.... :cheers:

I like reading about peoples scary stuff so Im moving this back into the New Post list......maybe Im a closet Masochist! ;)

Hmmm the last company I worked for had a great manager...He gave instruction to the 16yo apprentice to dismantle a refrigerated trailer (semi for the American buds) ... No biggie I hear you say! However this trailer contained around 6 gallons of R12 and the aforementioned apprentice was equipped with oxy/acetylene cutting gear...Apart from the legal aspects of allowing a 16yo to even use the said equipment in the UK any 16yo with the opportunity to use it would jump at the chance..yeah :shrug: Well I caught him just about to cut the R12 main line (1" bsp) When the manager asked the apprentice and he gave the reason I gave for him to desist from cutting it with the cutting gear he just said "Oh right so it's dangerous then?" He then gave instructions to drill or saw the pipes...wtf . Myself I lost an eardrum by "playing" at making oxy/acetylene bombs as a kid (too much access to scary stuff as a kid) I have great respect for anything that will maim or kill me these days :yes: In fact i'm building a training rig to check out my cnc setup so I dont hammer heavy inertia objects into unmovable objects :D Thanks for an hour of laughs and scares guys lol

:rolleyes: Well, Got a new Bed Mill and Finally installed power to my Shed where it is located. What a Job for a disabled guy, old too. Getting kinda of excited in my depression. lol..

Got to thinking about holding on to a fixture as the spindle spun me round and round. Thought, maybe i need to up my awareness some....so, here I am back, rereading others thoughts on Safety. Kinda of surprised me that not much has been added. Have we lost sight of the really good and valuable things in life. Has our focus turned to the mid-east, on things like bring our troops home from the some 100 plus countries they are now dispersed to, or get them on our borders to stop the inlegals problem, or how the gas prices are now getting into the food budget, and on and on. Has our focus changed from Safety?

Lets fire up the boilers and get own with helping each other be safe, I can spin a pretty good yarn... but I know others can to, and I bet that there are miles of it out there still untold... I need to be encouraged in the area of Safety and I want to hear from others...everyone has something of value to share in this area.....joel here, listening :boxing:

A long time ago when I first started programming and setting up Lathes there was a nasty guy that knocked everyone else in the shop saying everyone was too slow. One day after a conversation at Lunch (Subject> CNC Crashes) was his worst day. He bragged that he had never crashed a CNC and that he didn't think anyone else could setup, program, and proveout as fast as he could. I guess everyone got on his nerves and he was proving a job faster than normal. I asked him to please slow down that he had nothing to prove to anyone. I went back to my set up on the other side of his machine. About 15 minutes later the noise I heard nearly made me crap my pants as the machine jumped off the floor. I ran over to see him on the floor unconsious and blood everywhere. Apparently he lost his consentration and crashed the Lathe. The turret went into the spindle at full rapid so hard and fast all three jaws were spit through the door at about 5000 rpm. First and for most 5000 rpm for a chucking job is way too fast. It should have been no more than 2000 rpm. The jaws of the chuck hit his left leg and changed his life forever. After a long stay in the hospital I went to his home to see how he was doing. He was actually quite pleasant to be around in a none shop environment. Two days past and I went to visit him again only to have his wife tell me that a "staff infection has taken him away". This guy was a Great Machinist of the "Old School". She told me how much her husband liked me and that he wanted me to have his first indicator from when he was an Apprentice. Even though he was a jerk at work I still liked him. It's too bad he wasn't just a little different at work, he was truely a good guy.


The lesson I learned is that even though you think your the best and confident in your abilities don't loose sight of the respect that you should show toward a CNC or your co-workers. Accidents happen and they can happen to anyone. :bat:

:stickpoke :stickpoke :stickpoke Man, glad I am through for the day, that made me think i needed a beer .... now I'm not say'in it is ok to mix the brew with a machine, cause it's not..., just the affect the previous story has when you think of it. Listen, I have been around the guys who think, maybe even know, they can do it better and faster, and so on... and they make a big deal out of it... Like to work on ya, if you know what I mean. Well, this is one of those cases where listen isn't so good... keep you mind on your work, might even pleasantly caution the guy, whether you like him or not, your doing him a favor... better yet, by not listen to him, your do'n yourself a favor. relax yet be on guard, oh, and remember the guard, even a high rpm spindle with a big chuck can come crashing through and do so mighty serious damage as we can read above. I wonder what all those peers in the work area were thinking about the whole thing during the next few days and weeks.... So, I am done with work, in a safe relaxing position in my recliner, and i am gonna sip some suds... ... .... man, that is a tuff story, but it needed to be told, I am thinking about my machine in the shed.... I wonder if I should take up the guy down the road on his offere ...in the professional machine shop...he said give him a call he would give me some pointers....I think I will.... Well, say, got to get this cold one down, then hit the sack after a refreshing shower.... I sure hope that guys family is doing ok after this...must have been hard for them... maybe they have a good life go'n for themselves.. I like to keep my sinces keen... I will be looking for more guys and gals to keep this torch a burning with stories...Scary Stuff... :cheers:

I guess the stupidest thing I did as a kid (probably a long list) was to try to get the ball bearings out of their casings to use as slingshot ammo. Me and a couple of friends decided to use a rather large mechanical press to bust the casings apart and get said bearings. The first attempt went well and on the next attempt, a larger bearing, about 100mm (4 inch) dia, the race came apart and half of it hit the wall behind us on a fairly flat trajectory - the wall was about 15 metres (45 ft) away ! the scariest part was the fact it flew between two of us - at eye level of course... I often look back at that and wonder what life would have been like if we weren't so lucky. Needless to say we NEVER did that again, we did learn from that.

These days I work with large battery banks, several (32-40) large batteries connected in series with float voltages around the 540V mark. One job I did last week required the bank to hold around 530 amps for 30 mins (as part of commissioning). You can imagine the fault current possible if they can handle that as part of normal use. I use a lot of caution in this part of my job (all parts I guess.)

Russell.

Last Friday on the way to work, I noticed a faint burning smell. As they are doing road construction in the area I kept trying to see which one of the crews was burning something. Well, wouldn't you know, I kept getting closer to whatever they were burning and the odor was getting worse. I decided to roll down the window to increase the mix of fresh air to "burned" air. As it turns out, I'm glad I did, because I came to the realization that it wasn't the road crew that was burning it was the van I was driving!!! (flame2) The van was also quickly losing power so...

After a quick pull to the side of the road, turning off the van, a call to 911, pumping two fire extinguishers (provided by the State Highway Maintenance guy who stopped) into the engine compartment, a VERY HASTY unload of around $15,000 worth of tools and equipment, several County Sheriff cars and officers, two fire trucks with accompanying fire fighters, an EMS truck with crew, and a State Police Officer, below is what the van looks like now! :eek:

My thanks everyone who responded and helped with my emergency.

Ouch, glad to hear you (and your tools) got out safely, might take two coats of polish to get some of those marks out...

Russell.

:) Man, o Man, I have been burned out before, you know tired, frustrated, exhausted, and like that, but this is the real thing [burned out]. Glad you can look back on this one and your friends and family aren't looking down at you with flowers in hand. I hope you can recover from the dollar loss. I wonder why there are so many of these and someone has not yet come up with a flame or smoke detector for vehicles....hummmm... well, I am to old to pursue... but sound like an opportunity for some young enterprising sort to do something in the name of safety and benefit at the same time...Scarey ride....well, heres to ya! enjoy one for me will ya! :cheers: SoftShell

Wow, HayTay! That's something else! Imagine what could have happened!

Damn Fords......

Good to hear you are OK.

Scott

I've been reading these post and it certainly helps me to keep safety in the front of my mind. I feel that safety is an issue not to be forgotten. Often times there is 'that guy' who thinks that b/c he is so smarter that he can go so faster. I will tell you that actually being smarter means that you know to slow down, double check yourself, and allow time for that overlooked mistake to be realized before it becomes and accident. I personally am not worried about dieing in an accident. To me, the concern is having my head turned sideways slighty for the rest of my life because I've lost an eye. Living with a dismemberment of any scale is my concern. Safety is not only what and how you work, it's also what and how you allow others around you to do. Summon the guts to stand up, and halt everything that is going on if required, in order to stop someone from being dangerous around you. And always allow others to check you on the way your doing something, or not wearing proper gear that you know you should. Thanks to all the previous post they've been good reading. P.S. I like this cnczone thing, what a great resource/community.

A guy at work last year with about 30 years of experience got distracted while reaching into the vice for the part without really backing off the vice from the spinning spindle with a big new end mill in there. Needless to say he lost 2 digits on the one hand back to the next knuckle.

I used to run a pretty good sized planer mill on 2nd shift making band saw tables. I was the only one in the department most of the time I worked on that shift, never a good idea to work alone, even at home I tell my wife when I'm going to be running somthing in the shop.
Anyway, I was the youngest in the depart ment and the much older guy they they had hired at one time just would not admit that he didn't know what he was doing while his mistakes got worse and worse.
I was new to the company and about 40 years his junior and certainly felt it wasn't my place to give him advise when I could see he was struggeling.
He just would not ask for help nor except it from the other old timers.
His employment ended the nite he put up a 900lb raw casting on his machine,went to lunch , came back and went right to work takeing a big roughing cut with a 16" face mill in a 50 hp spindle. Never clamped the casting to the fixture so when the cutter went over a large cast in hole,
it must have picked up the whole thing and sent it for a spin because, all I remember about it was the GD casting landing next to me!!!!
Another foot and a half to the right and I would have been killed or thrown into my own moving planer and killed. No broken bones, no gashes, no workmens comp, just punch my ticket and send me home!(still upsets me to think about it )
Anyone too arrogant/ignorant to ask or except help when they need it is just as bad as the guy standing next to him letting him struggle or saying "it's not my job to help him"
Don't ever let some dumb a** make you into an innocent by-stander, no matter who that dumb a** is!

ps if anyone is wondering how such a thing could happen, do a serch to find some pics of a manual planer mill with a 6 foot by 14 foot table on it. That is not even considerd to be a big planer.

Please proceade with caution

merl

Wow, those planer mills are big machines. Lucky you! :)

When talking about machine shop safety. I once heard that accidents don't happen but unforseen circumstances do.

A good example was when after having a Government Health and Safety officer inspect the factory. During the inspection she was so impressed by the safety devices I had devised for spindle moulders that she photographed them.

One week later a collegue with several years experience was demonstrating the dangers of the spindle moulders to a new employee. He then proceeded to remove all guarding and shoved his fingers INTO the tooling while it was running down. Lucky for him it was just the tip of the finger that got wipped off.

I guess no matter how much you make a machine or process safe human ingenuity will always find a way to bypass it.

I found these links when, you guessed it, I was searching for something else. Isn't the internet GREAT!

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches (http://www.pmichaud.com/toast/)

Fun with Grapes - A Case Study (http://www.pmichaud.com/grape/)

At first it's kind of funny, who would ever think that Strawberry Pop Tarts and Grapes could be so dangerous? Then you think about your kid(s), with their short attention spans, toasting and microwaving their meals unsupervised and your smile/chuckle sort of curdles and dies.

Brings back memories of when I was in college and returned to my apartment only to find my blackened toaster in the hallway. It seems that one of my roommates was toasting some bread when some hot babe gave him a call. The toaster jammed when it was ready to 'pop' and got stuck in the ON position. By the time my roommate realized that something was burning and got to the toaster he said that flames were coming out of the slots. He quickly unplugged the device and took it outside where it burned itself out. The toaster was then banished to the hallway because of the awful smell. Using a bit of elbow grease, I cleaned up the toaster really good and managed to get another 15 years, or so, use out of it. :)

LOL. Talk of the devil saw the Plasma effect with the grape only yesterday on the Brainiac program.

Definately not one to try at home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oow4632OwQ

Although the Brainiac babes are compulsive viewing. Doing those dangerous scientific expermients so that you don't do them at home.

http://www.skyone.co.uk/programmes/brainiac/girlsgallery.aspx

More microwave mayhem from the Brainiac crew.

Baked Beans (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmiIqIRdQ50&NR)

Gunpowder (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elnYMcMfgI8)

Newton's Cradle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkn6fMn9eqU&NR)

Paint Can (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQSL6sibzxE)

Toothpick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYnHKdQdLWs)

Crazy Microwaves - HOLY MOLY BATMAN!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkn6fMn9eqU&NR)

Had a pretty good one this last weekend (11-26-06), let me lay it out there so as to both illustrate my own stupidity and prevent others from suffering from the same.

I had to drill a series of holes into a piece of sheet steel (~ 16 ga galvanized) that I had folded into a U shape. One small one through the bottom leg, and a larger counter bore (for lack of a better term) in the top leg directly above it. It was 18" long, and the long parts of the U's were 1.5" each. I needed the holes all in a straight line, so I opted to use my Bridgeport instead of laying them out and using a hand drill. I chose to use a drill bit for the small holes (a #7 IIRC), and a 1/2" HSS end mill for the counter bores (so I could control the depth of cut better and prevent a mark on the opposite leg of the part).

I had a 6" Kurt vise on the table, and it was secured properly. I put this part into the vise and cranked it down as tight as I could (if you've ever clamped sheet metal in a machinist's vise, you will see where this is going).

So now I have an 18" part marginally clamped in a 6" vise. I then proceed to drill three holes along the part. The one in the center goes fine. Drill counter bore, great. Now I move onto one end, which has about a 4 in overhang out of the side of the vise. Seeing this I stack up blocking under it for support. I drill the hole, no problem. I start with the end mill, and then it all goes pear shaped. The tool was brand new, HSS, so it was sharp as hell. Just as it popped through the bottom of the cut, it hangs up, pulls the part vertically out of the vise, and begins to swing it around at about 500 rpm (luckily I was still in high gear).

I had been feeding with the quill, so the first customer for the whirling wheel of doom was my right forearm. The piece hit it, dug in, and kind of bent a little bit, which turned the cutting edge up and blunted subsequent impacts (got lucky there). It then continued across my body hitting my abdomen about 2 in below my nipples. Since the edge was turned at a funny angle, it didn't so much cut as force my shirt through the flesh there. Tore about a 6" long stripe across my abdomen.

By that time I had finally started to react and try to get away, however, the strike on my belly had let the piece grab my shirt, which was now being wound up around the tool. When I first felt it tug and heard my shirt ripping, I knew exactly what was happening, so I immediately turned to my left and tried to get down to the ground so as to be under the table and the still spinning piece.

I never made it to the floor, as the spindle and I came to a compromise somewhere slightly above a crouch. Luckily I was able to stand my ground and stall the spindle out. I had no shirt left, save for the collar that was now across my collar bones like a yoke. We sat there in a sort of mexican stand-off with the motor humming away for about a second before my old man (who was not real far away) came running up and turned the motor off.

I disengaged myself from what was left of my shirt, and surveyed the damage.

One pretty good gouge on my forearm, luckily it didn't go very deep since the piece had to accelerate from a dead stop to hit that arm in just under 6 inches. Bled quite a bit but nothing that won't heal.

The 6" tear in my abdomen was a different story. That required a trip to the ER and 15 stitches to repair.

The part was scrapped, as is (I believe) the end mill. The arbor that it was in is likely bent too. Maybe I'll get lucky and the spindle itself won't be bent, I haven't checked yet.

I'm still in one piece, more or less, so it was a lesson well learned. Looking back at it, even just a few mins afterwards, I could not believe the depth of my own stupidity.

So, moral of the story, don't work with long overhangs, and don't try to clamp sheet metal on edge in a smooth jaw machinist's vise.

It sounds like advice that everyone should already know, even I myself knew this beforehand, but I did it anyway.

Don't be tempted. Do your sheet metal work on the bench or properly clamped on a drill press.

:eek: Glad to hear your ok CoolHand. :eek:

:eek: Glad to hear your ok CoolHand. :eek:

Yeah, I'm alright. Most of the damage was to my pride.

I still cannot believe the retardation of my actions.

It seems my stupidity knows no bounds . . . . . .

Perhaps we should make a line of tear-away clothing specifically for machinists. :) It's amazing that a shirt would hold up enough to stall out a spindle!

Glad to hear you survived, though.

Je.....CHR.......!!!!!
Cool Hand, if the guy that pulled you out of that mess didn't say it then I will,
Did you KNOW that what you were doing was wrong but you went ahead and did it anyway?!?!
No one deserves to get hurt for their dumb mistakes so you know how light you got off for this one considering how it could have turned out.
The human capacity for impaitients and forgetfullness never ceases to amaze me.Just today I caught myself reaching into a running spindle to check a dimention. The hell with the loss of a $120. calipers, it probably would have taken my hand and the rest of me in with it. I couldn't beleive what I was going to do.
Lets please not turn this thread into a contest to see who can do the dumbest thing on any given day, OK?
The next time you need to work with a peice of flimsy material, try clamping it to a sacrificial peice of plywood or somthing and then clamp that in your vise.
If you have a part that is U shaped fit a chunk of wood in it to take up the space inside and make the part more ridged for vising.
Please proceed carefully

merl

Je.....CHR.......!!!!!
Cool Hand, if the guy that pulled you out of that mess didn't say it then I will,
Did you KNOW that what you were doing was wrong but you went ahead and did it anyway?!?!
No one deserves to get hurt for their dumb mistakes so you know how light you got off for this one considering how it could have turned out.
The human capacity for impaitients and forgetfullness never ceases to amaze me.Just today I caught myself reaching into a running spindle to check a dimention. The hell with the loss of a $120. calipers, it probably would have taken my hand and the rest of me in with it. I couldn't beleive what I was going to do.
Lets please not turn this thread into a contest to see who can do the dumbest thing on any given day, OK?
The next time you need to work with a peice of flimsy material, try clamping it to a sacrificial peice of plywood or somthing and then clamp that in your vise.
If you have a part that is U shaped fit a chunk of wood in it to take up the space inside and make the part more ridged for vising.
Please proceed carefully

merl


I agree totally, as I sat in the truck on the way to the ER, sans shirt, with a shop towel over my newest weight loss scheme, I was literally in awe of my stupidity. I knew better, I don't know what the hell I was thinking, I know those tricks, I'm not a new hire, I just had my head up my ass on this particular day, and I got bit for it.

As you say, just enough sting to drive the lesson home, but not enough for a permanent limp. (nuts)

I think in this case I was trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. I should have gotten out my sharpie, a punch, and used the bench vise and a hand drill like I've done a thousand times before.

When you've got whiz-bang tools, it's very hard to resist the urge to use them for everything, even if they're really not the best tool for the job.

If nothing else, it reminded me that I need to pay more attention, and that I need to install an E-Stop on my manual machines.

At any rate, as I type, I'm sporting a stylish duct tape bandage over my stitched up gullet and a new found quest to not do stupid **** while I'm in the shop.

Hi, when I was apprenticed on the mines in South West Africa we had this big 8 foot guillotine and one day.....................
Strewth!
Ian.

Hi, when I was apprenticed on the mines in South West Africa we had this big 8 foot guillotine and one day.....................
Strewth!
Ian.

Im not sure if Im glad you left the end of it up to the imagination or not! S#*t !!!
Was it you? Did it take bodyparts or...well you know...just hope you weren't the unlucky bloke under it!

When I was in metal shop in high school several years ago, we had a variety of mills and lathes. The largest lathe had a chuck that was at least 24" in diameter, thing belonged in a shipyard or something, not in a pre-adolescent environment. The lathe had to be 25-30 feet long, if I remember right. Anyway, this thing had a motor and gearing to match it's bed size. One day, a practical joker left the chuck (had 4 or 6 different chuck key holes) with all chuck keys filled with 22 long rifle shells, and then put chuck keys in all the holes, awaiting the next person to use this beast. Well, about a week later, someone used the lathe, trying to turn a piece of 8" solid round stock aluminum about 6 feet long. The user saw all the chuck keys, and removed them, but missed the 22 shells. The end result was one kid getting expelled and arrested, and one kid trying desperately to find a place to hide his now soiled underwear. Not to mention the holes in the ceiling, and two rounds imbedded in the Lincoln arc welder.
I had a 4.5 inch grinder fit with a wire wheel spinning at roughly 10,000 too many RPM's while I cleaned up a tube frame section with it. I had the frame section leaned up against the wall, and did not have my shirt tucked in. Shirt, of course, caught the wire wheel and the hilarities ensued. The grinder wrapped its' way up my shirt and began to strangle me with my own shirt, and all the while it was scrubbing away a few layers of (hopefully) unneccesary epidermis. At some point in my shock, I decided I would like to breathe again, and the thought struck me, "hey, I can't breathe, and this kinda tickles. Wait, no, it really f'n hurts". I finally unplugged the darn thing, and the tension eased on my neck. Altogether, I rate it about a 9 for fun and laughs. Just kidding, I have a new found respect for 4.5 inch grinders.

Then there is the time I tack welded a tab on a crossmember I built. I didn't like the location of the tab, so instead of simply reaching down and grabbing the hammer NEXT TO THE TAB, I proceeded to strike it with the palm of my hand. Well, it was still REAL hot, and instead of the tack weld "magically disappearing", it sheared off the tab and my hand went smack into it and across it. 10 stitches later, I realized that what I had done was unwise.
The sad thing is, I have frequented the ER here from the time I was 5 until now, they all know me well. They had a new ER doctor that day, and he kept trying to get a cover over my hand so I didn't have to watch him stitch. I got fed up after about 5 minutes of this, and told him so. He kept asking me if I was about to pass out or anything, or if it hurt in certain areas. I was carrying on a conversation with my buddy who drove me up there while doc was sewing, and I finally snapped at him, " look, I am to the ER what Cliff was to IHOP (don't know if all of you will get that one), I am like Norm was to the show Cheers. Sew me up and let me get out of here."
He was a little shocked at that, but then the nurse informed him that, yes, I was a regular, and so was my father before me.

Way back at the beginning of this thread, someone found some cyanide under their bench. Well I too have uncovered a quart jar labeled CYANIDE with skull and cross bone drawn on the front of the glass jar. My grandfather was a gunsmith and this stuff was supposed to be used for gold plating? so I was told anyway. How the heck do I get rid of this stuff?
I own a small TAIG lathe with a 3/4 in. spindle and screw on 4-jaw chuck. One day while running it at 6000 rpm polishing a piece of brass, I shut the motor off which causes a braking jerk when the field collapses and neatly unscrewed this 4-jaw chuck spinning at 6000 rpm! I got to see it mar the once virgin lathe bed and then clear off the rest of the bench as it tried to find the lowest part of my shop floor.! Just barely got out of the way of that one.
I have an old gasoline blow torch I use to heat up big parts. Well, the leather pump cup is worn out and I didn't have another piece of leather that size, but I did find something to substatue the pump cup. Unfortunately the pump cup thickness was too thick and the pump handle would no longer screw down to keep it seated at the bottom of the stroke. Some that know better allready see where this is going. Well, filled up the torch half full and pumped it up and started the fire. All going well until the pressure rising from the heat caused the piston rod to extend and raw full to spray/bubble up from around the pump rod! Well of couse it caught fire! And naturaly I'm in a hurry and inside the closed shop next to the shop door, you know, cold outside. Long story short it is very hard to put out a pressurized liquid fire!! I will now replace the piston with the correct material!
As humans we are definately dangerous to ourselves and others at times even with the best of intentions. OK, to start the "safety" juices flowing, what is the scariest tool (or stuff) in your shop?
The tool that gets my highest level of attention is the one that spins a ten inch piece of steel at 3450 rpm in open air - my table saw. I always use push sticks and wear safety glasses. If I had a meat-cutters chain mail glove I would probably wear that too :) .
The stuff that raised my hackles the highest was the quart mason jar I found tucked away in a corner of my garage when I moved in. It is labeled cyanide! Holy S--T! Cyanide! What in the world was the previous guy doing with that?

robotic regards,

Tom
= = = = =
"Invention is the mother of necessity."
- - Thorstein Veblen

Hi all, now the taste buds are really dripping with saliva for more gory tales, but this aint going to happen, too morbid, dwelling on workplace "occurances" , so I'll just pass on a simple "watch out" for this very common but potentially lethal mistake.
How many of us when working on a lathe and at the end of a turning job polish or bring to size a shaft with a piece of emery cloth?
I would say-'every man and his dog' at some time or other.
This is like looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.
On this occasion the guy in front of me had a strip of emery cloth, about 1 1/2" wide and two foot long, and he was polishing the end of a shaft in the lathe to fit a bearing.
Long story short, the end of the emery cloth tightened on the shaft and wrapped up the whole 2 foot length.
Luckily all the guy got was a burn across the back of his right hand, that took two months to fully heal.
Ever see a piece of raw meat that doesn't bleed but just oozes sticky stuff?
Whenever you use emery cloth to polish in the lathe or drill, just cut it into small squares and it can't do too much damage if it grabs on.
How many of us work on a lathe or mill, or for that matter ANY machine with the potential to throw out projectiles without eye protection?
It only takes a split second to target your eye.
There are a million horror stories out there, this is just one of them.
Thkoutsidthebox- the guillotine tale didn't affect me, only the guy who put his fingers between the clamp bar and the blade, to hold down some strips of material with the tips of his fingers, that were too short to be gripped by the clamp bar.
As the blade went down the strips of material tilted up and gripped his fingers against the blade, and as the blade went back up it took his finger nails off, bloody mess.
True story, happened in 1966 at Central Fields workshops in Oranjemund, on the Consolidated Diamond Mines in South West Africa and was recorded in the accident book records.
Ian.

The thread title does say "Scary Stuff" not gory stuff so here is one that was scary but ended okay.

Guy driving forklift backed up too far with the forks raised, hooked into the gas fired overhead heater, pulled it back a few inches and cracked the gas line. Enough gas was still getting through so the pilot light stayed lit but two feet away there is now a 1/4" gap in the line...safe to conclude that gas is escaping. However this is all about 16 feet above the floor and the longest ladder available is only twelve. Grabbed ladder, leaned against washroom, climbed up ladder, told employee heavier than me to get up also, pulled ladder up and slid ladder not quite halfway out from edge of washroom ceiling, told employee to sit on end AND STAY THERE, walked out on ladder and turned off gas valve. Situation no longer scary.

The thread title does say "Scary Stuff" not gory stuff so here is one that was scary but ended okay.

Guy driving forklift backed up too far with the forks raised, hooked into the gas fired overhead heater, pulled it back a few inches and cracked the gas line. Enough gas was still getting through so the pilot light stayed lit but two feet away there is now a 1/4" gap in the line...safe to conclude that gas is escaping. However this is all about 16 feet above the floor and the longest ladder available is only twelve. Grabbed ladder, leaned against washroom, climbed up ladder, told employee heavier than me to get up also, pulled ladder up and slid ladder not quite halfway out from edge of washroom ceiling, told employee to sit on end AND STAY THERE, walked out on ladder and turned off gas valve. Situation no longer scary.

Wowza, if your neighborhood OSHA guy had been around and had seen you do that, he'd have fainted dead away right on the spot. lol

Wowza, if your neighborhood OSHA guy had been around and had seen you do that, he'd have fainted dead away right on the spot. lol

He would have done a hell of a lot more than faint if a natural gas explosion had lifted the roof off my 10,000 sq ft building which was a possibility.

:eek:

He would have done a hell of a lot more than faint if a natural gas explosion had lifted the roof off my 10,000 sq ft building which was a possibility.

LMAO

Touche' sir.

I wondered why the fight or flight decision was to stay and stop the leak, but owning the building would do it for me too. Still scary though, none too crazy about heights! or ladders for that matter. He would have done a hell of a lot more than faint if a natural gas explosion had lifted the roof off my 10,000 sq ft building which was a possibility.

It's an interesting solution to the problem.

Since the forklift could obviously reach that high, why not work off the forks?

If not lifted up there outright, you could have gotten a 4' boost to start from.

NG isn't explosive until it hits about a 5% concentration. Unless it was a tiny room it shouldn't have wanted to go boom for a few mins anyway.

It's an interesting solution to the problem.

Since the forklift could obviously reach that high, why not work off the forks?

If not lifted up there outright, you could have gotten a 4' boost to start from.

NG isn't explosive until it hits about a 5% concentration. Unless it was a tiny room it shouldn't have wanted to go boom for a few mins anyway.

Forklift was still raised and in contact with furnace. You are correct about the explosion hazard not being imminent but ignition of the escaping gas just as a flame was a concern and a few minutes had been wasted while people ran round in circles looking for me. I could have tried turning the gas off at the meter outside but the last time I had tried to do that the valve was thoroughly jammed. I knew the one near the furnace was operable by hand.

Forklift was still raised and in contact with furnace. You are correct about the explosion hazard not being imminent but ignition of the escaping gas just as a flame was a concern and a few minutes had been wasted while people ran round in circles looking for me. I could have tried turning the gas off at the meter outside but the last time I had tried to do that the valve was thoroughly jammed. I knew the one near the furnace was operable by hand.

Ahhhhhh

Much more clear now.

I am very familar with employees "running around in circles" when something goes pear shaped.

Well, pulled my stitches out on Monday. Happy to report that my gullet is once again in one piece and operating under its own power.

Hi aLL, here's a familiar situation that a million millers have done and got away with, except for one.
My father retired at 68 and passed most of his tools onto me and one item had a bit of history.
It was a 6" ruler, and if there ever was an accident waiting for a place to happen it's with a 6" ruler and a 3/4" end mill.
Imagine holding a ruler in your left hand against the job and rough sighting the position of the cutter to the end before taking a cut across the job.
If you get the end of the ruler too close to the cutter it will grab the ruler between the job and the cutter.
My father got this ruler from the rubbish bin when the guy next to him soiled his undies and threw the ruler in the bin.
It's got a lovely set of bite marks in it.
Ian

Well folks, thanks for all the wonderful stories and helpful ideas in the forum. I've not posted before, but just couldn't resist adding one more "scary" to the mix. My brother worked in a shop that had a couple punch presses. (Not my favorite piece of equipment) I'm not sure of the tonnage of the offending press, but when the operator cycled it, the main shaft broke, letting the 5 foot diameter flywheel fall 3 feet to the floor and take off rolling through the shop. Thanks to two severely damaged bridgeports, and a chain link fence surrounding the tool crib, the thing finally stopped after rolling it's way more than 60 feet through the shop with guys yelling and running trying to give it room. Apparently the operator had adjusted the press wihout understanding the consequences of allowing the dies to ram together. I was very thankful I worked in a different shop at the time, my brother wished the press operator was as well.
Gary

Coolhand, I'm glad to hear you're back in the pink!
By the way, I love that line "when things are going pear shaped" I use that one my self.
One more thing I wanted to add to this thread was somthing about breathing things we shouldn't. I think too many of us probably don't take the same precautions at home that we do at work. I was just reminded tonight of my ongoing search for a suitable cutting oil/fluid that I can safely use in my basement shop at home. I have found the most binine and yet effective cutting oil to be a lard oil based product called "Butter Cut" that is sold at our local farm supply store for threading pipe ect... a very good product but, if you leave any residue on your machines or tools they will be stuck fast in a couple of weeks ( works out with Liquid Wrench but that is not safe in the house either )
My concern for my wife and two small children in the house who will also breath these fumes is always broaught to mind by my own respitory problems as a resault of working in a shop with a large indoor paint booth.
It's really the fault of the painter not the employer, they provided very good ventilation and make-up air for the booth but the pianter never used the dam thing because he was too lazy to push the loaded racks into the booth, just sprayed them right out in the assembly area. This aloud the paint and solvent mist to be carried all over the shop and most of us were too busy to really notice at first. By the time we could see the build up of over spray on everything it had been going on like this for at least a week.
We confronted the boss with the problem and the painter would use the proper procedures for a couple of hours then fall back to his own lazy habbits. This went on for a little over a year while we completed that particular assembly and finely the boss had enough of the complaints and got rid of the painter for someone who would follow orders. Fine and dandy, even better, I don't work in that shop any more so I don't have to deal with the paint fumes any more. Except now some of my former co-workers and myself are" showing symtoms of prolonged exposure to organic solvents" read that as emphysema.
There is nothing machoe or "just part of the job" about getting emphysema from careless work habbits. We too should have been more insistent that the problem be taken care of but, we were not. Now we have to pay for it.
Don't become a needless victome!

merl

Well said Merl, and I agree about the inhaled solvents and fumes being oft overlooked.

Around my shop we work almost exclusively in aluminum, so the temps are not really high enough to boil the water based coolants we use. Coolant fog was a little bit of a problem at first, until I got the enclosures up to snuff, but now that's been under control for some time.

Mostly I worry about grinding dust that is suspended in the air, and fumes from burning off things you find stuck to car bodies and the like. We only really machine aluminum, but we also do a good bit of steel bending, welding, and general fab work in the same shop, so it's all floating around in there.

I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea what that stuff does to you, but I can see with it does to steel, so I'm fairly sure it ain't good for your lungs.

Trouble is, short of turning over the air in the shop several times an hour while filtering it thoroughly (which I can in no way, shape, or form afford to do), I don't really see any way to deal with it effectively. I guess you could issue masks or the like, maybe respirators, but all things like that get to be very cumbersome to work in very quickly, and then fall into disuse.

Right now about all that can be done is to keep the grindings and general shop dirt swept up, and to keep the doors open as much as possible while doing heavy grinding and cutting with abrasives.

I dunno what the answer is, on the one hand, you spend all your time mitigating risks and get nothing done, and on the other, you do nothing and swim in chlorinated oils while breathing the fumes of it burning and die of some horrible disease at the age of 40.

I once got "Bit" by a low ohm 1500 volt insulation tester used for electric motors. It felt like a 1000 poung gorilla shaking me side to side for an hour, though it only lasted a couple of seconds.
The most dangerous tool is the one you don't respect!

Yes, agewon
I stay far away from the heavy voltage stuff, have a great fear of it do to lack of knowlage on the subject. I guess I never learned more than I needed to know to hook up machines and check for blown fuses.
Coolhand, I should mention that when ever we have the doors closed and things start to get the least bit foggey I MUST put on my resperator (the cartrige kind, not the the paper dust mask) and I am no longer able to weld due to the fumes.
I have at least another 20 years to go befor I can think about retirement so that's too much time to be sucking fumes that I don't have to.
I don't know how old you are but, I'm over 40 (not dead yet, thank you!)
Looking back on the nearly 30 years previous I don't recall a time when I was ever told I couldn't whear a resperator. Hind sight beeing what it is, I will make a consentrated effort to take better care of myself from now on and, give out advise to anyone who wants it so, here is just a little more.
If you are incharge of the shop then just make the resperator a rule and efforce it (lead by example)
'Nuff for now....

merl

You can buy personal air respirators (PAPR) for industrial use that are supposed to be comfortable over long periods.

The one at the link below is on my 'to buy' list and I can use it for wood/metal dust, spray painting, and welding fumes. At the moment Im using a regular respirator (Also not a crappy paper one). Of course all this costs $$$.

The system below with removable auto darkening welding visor is coming in at €850 (Approx $1000). I'd spend that on a good saw, so its easy for me to justify this. As they say, you only get one set of lungs and one set of ears. Waking up coughing with tinitis by the time Im 50....no thank you!

Maybe the link will be useful to someone else. M2c.

http://www.scottint.com/products/Air-Purifying/Powered-(PAPR)/T-Power/4362
http://www.scottint.com/products/Air-Purifying/Powered-(PAPR)/Tornado/Procap/4170
http://www.scottint.com/products/Air-Purifying/Powered-(PAPR)/Tornado/Procap-Weld/4218

Hmm.. I've worn them type of respirators.. after about 20 mins the bridge of your nose starts to itch. after 4 hours you get serious physical discomfort on your nose, cheek bones and a claustrophobic feeling.

Perhaps we shouldn't work lol :)

Figured I would add to this so maybe someone doesnt do that same thing.

1st of all Never listen to the owner of the shop unless you see him running machinery. Second if he is 70years old and all his equipment is that old , and he buys a new piece of equipment DONT listen to a thing he says.

the smallest cnc machine we had had an 18" chuck and we ran it no more than 500 rpms I think the smallest part we ever ran on the cncs were like 8" they were hastoly, inconells etc. We ran APU parts for garrett avitation.

So in 1990 or 1992 ( dont remember the exact year) the owner decides to buy a one of those new fancy Hitachi seki lathes with all the options. I think we had the very first machine besides garrett in the valley.

I worked the night shift and pretty much every night I would turn it on to learn how to run it as it sat for a good 4 weeks with the numbnut owners son trying to figure it out. after a few days I started running rc wheels for some of my cars(old hobby) started making them for a few friends etc.

anyway 4 weeks go by, I come into the shop early 2pm.

I walk by the hitachi and the owner is chewing his useless son out for not having this job done after 4 weeks. Seems the son decided he wanted to take 2 weeks off and go to disney land. and wanted to leave that next morning.
As I walked to my old school machines, I here one of my coworkers ( who also came in early ) say my name and walked away screaming.
then the owner the supervisor and the son came over to me and said so whats the deal. you can run this thing. I go yup. they go bull *&^%.
SO I open my box and pull out a dozen or so really trick wheels, after a initial butt chewing and alot of cussing. they go ok the machine is yours finish this job.

so I dump all the programs, dump the tools and set it up under the watchfull eye of the owner and his son and some garble they were spewing in the back round.
the job gets done that evening about 7pm. I get get screwed , They gave me day shift.

after about 2 weeks friday afternoon (before the 4th of july weekend) the owner walks up to me and said lets try some bar feed work( we had no barfeed)

the bar was an inconel 718 bar 2" dia 3 foot long.
he wants to use ceramics ( we were also the first shop west of the mississippi to test proto type ceramics). I tell him that that bar might not work because its three feet long and teh jaws are only 3" long. He said that the machine dealer assured him that if we crank up the jaw pressure we would have no problems and there would be a bit of Vibration.

I start off slow 1500 then 2500 3500 some vibration starts he says crank it to 5k I said NO you do it. After being threatend with loosing my job I decided to give it a whirl ( we had a love hate relationship)
My coworker and neighbor was walking behind the machine when I cranked it up to 5k
I hit the estop immed. within seconds of the machine hitting 5k

the bar wobbled out fo the back of the machine, bending the 2" 718 bar in a 45 degree angle hitting the 20foot concrete ceiling and putting a 4 foot wide 6 in hole almost through it.
then upon landing 35 feet away destroying a tool box put a 6" wide 3" deep hole in the floor.
The machine moved 1-2feet in the air ( I **** you not) and 3 feet from its original location at a angle.

the actuater on the machine was destroyed along with all the sheet metal pulleys belt and everything else in the back.

I simply looked at the owner said f*^**^ you and walked outside
I smoked a pack and a have of ciggerettes in an hour and was shaking so back I couldnt get in my truck to drive home.
I planned on quiting after that. I was extreamly pissed at myself and at the owner.

the owner went home and so did everyone else. just me and my co worker are sitting thier laughing ( it was funny about an 3 hours later only becuase no one got hurt).

after everything kinda calmed down I felt like crap for destroying a 100k+ machine. having to get this job out that really needed to be out by the coing tuesday.I finally drove home and sat around mulling over what I did.
I figured I would go in sat to finish the job on another machine ( it would be slow but I could get it done by tuesday.)

as I am sitting there on a sat morning at 3:30am running parts I get this dumb idea that I am going to have this hitachi back up and running before work on tuesday am. heck we had a full service machine shop including id/od grinders cmm everything. not to mention a ton of material to make these componets with.

I used the hitachi to program all my parts( I wasnt really good at programming) and transfered them to the big machines.

Tuesday morning I am there at 3:30 am and the shop starts coming in and we are talking. and all the other guys were impressed as hell.

5am the owner comes in and over the loud speaker asks for me to come to his office. Uh-oh
when I get in there I was nervous. he applogized to me for giving me a bad time and threatening me about loosing my job if I didnt do what he said. asked how I was doing emotionally and said I could have a few days off if needed.
then he said he was going to order another machine or have this one repaired immed.
I said too late its fixed and running I worked through the weekend and holiday and fixed it.
he just looked at me and I walked out.
that morning hitachi came out ( we were running parts with a little vibration) and all they had to do was indicate the actuator in, I had it within .003 it needed to be within .0005 .

2 weeks later I got a 10.00 per hour raise and was incharge of running the cnc and manual side of the shop. oh boy ;) I had only worked there for 1 month in the cnc stuff and 6 months in the manual stuff.

Thats the scariest thing taht has every happened to me in a machine shop, a few years later I started my own shop and had up to 13 employees I ahve never ever had anything close to that happen.
sure tool holders fall out of the arcolocs at 6000rpm and spin like a top on the floor but you can run from those LOL

sorry for the long post,
Delw

'bout scary stuff at work.. oh boy did i see a lot go terribly wrong..

on my first job, the most simple jobs turned out to be the most dangerous..
one day one of the guys had cleaned a hydraulick ram for tensioning steel in prestressed concrete.. he cleaned the wedges that hold the cable, he cleaned the inside, and connected the jack to a highpressure Hydro-pump ( 1100Bar Max ), the Dumbass didnt clean the connectors, and he didn't screw on the return hose connector properly, so it was still blocked.. he switched on the pump, hit the pedal ( it was pedal operated ), and the pressure immediatly hit 'bout 900 bar, which the bolts of the ram couldn't handle.. it was like a "Goalkeeper GUN" going off... 20 bolts snapped, and went like bullets, leaving sparks everywhere.
Welding?.. i've had sparks falling into my boots, and even in my ear!!..scary nothing happend, but it scared the pants off of me.
another scary moment was when i was MIG welding, i finished a weld, tilted my helmet upwards, and at that moment, that little piece of slag that builds up on MIG welds, jumped of, right into my eye.. off to the hospital.. i had a small blister on my eye, haven't touched a welder without wearing safetyglasses eversince.., other things i've seen : people getting their gloves caught in drill presses, people getting all kinds of stuff in their eyes 'cos they weren't wearing safetyglasses.

A Machine that really sometimes scares the crap out of me, is our tablegrinder.. one of the colleagues isn't too careful with it, too high workpieces with a blunt grindingstone, the momentun of the stone just rips the pieces off the table, flinging em through the workshop ( unoccupied area ) and smashing the stone to oblivian in the process..

I was in the hospital burns unit after a motorbike crash and the guy in the next bed was getting skingrafts too... I asked him what happened and he said he worked in a foundry, well they were pouring molten metal into a mould but apparently there was some moisture in the mould and a long "spit" of molten metal jumped up and went down his boot.. apparently went right through his foot! Ouch!

I agree with Ken Shea, complacency is the mother of all accidents! I've seen more 'experienced' jouneymen lose fingers than students. A little fear is not always a bad thing. wearing gloves is just a serious no no! I can't believe someone would do this! We were told in highschool!!! Maybe some of these guys could learn a thing or two about safety from their students!The part that scares me is that we jouneymen are teaching others our bad habits!

I was in the hospital burns unit after a motorbike crash and the guy in the next bed was getting skingrafts too... I asked him what happened and he said he worked in a foundry, well they were pouring molten metal into a mould but apparently there was some moisture in the mould and a long "spit" of molten metal jumped up and went down his boot.. apparently went right through his foot! Ouch!

Had somethin' like that happen myself. As a kid helpin his pa' get the swather ready for cutting Canola [ ok we'd tried cutting it but realized we needed a roller so we needed to attach a hitch, in the field] We get the trusty cutting torch to cut a couple holes in the frame. Of course, this starts a fire under the swather [ in a field of Canola ~150 acres, 20 bushel/acre and $8/bushel you can guess I knew it was valuable even as a kid ]

So, to put the fire out I use my foot [sparks are still flying but being a tuff guy..] I'm still standing but kinda stretching my foot out under the frame to get to the fire, Dads still cutting away above [oblivious to my efforts] just as I get the fire snuffed out the center of the hole he's cutting drops out, and hits the opening of my nike just right, runs down inside my shoe over my foot and around under it. 1-3 deg burns over about 70% of my foot.[burnt the leather nike right off my foot-just a bit of rubber sole left] So he's gotta get the crop off, I hike outta the field ~200yrds and then drive 7 miles to home[ I was 11-12]. Walk in the house [shock is starting to wear off and I'm getting some pain now] and ask mom if its bad or not :) At the end of the day I was in the hospital w/ a doctor scraping the burn to get all the little bits of metal out. No pain killers. I was on crutch's for ~4weeks w/ trips to the doc twice a day for dressings.

Dad didn't realize how bad it was, but when he found out he was feeling pretty bad about it. I felt sorry for him as he was pretty upset about it all. 'twas a good experiance in using one's head 'Think first'
I'm still learning that one.

Jerry

Almost lost my right index finger to a power grinder.

Boss did 2 things wrong with it: You should NEVER take the gaurd off of the grinder (I think this has been touched upon sometime back in the thread), and you should NEVER put a grinding stone bigger than what the tool was intended for (7inch stone in a machine designed for 4.5inch).

I should have waited until the grinder coasted to a stop before flipping it over and setting it down on the ground. But I didn't. The inertia of the rotating mass of the cutting stone carried itself into the knuckle of my index finger as I flipped it over. That was the first time (and hopefully last) that I have ever seen my own bone.

Drove home in the pickup truck and told my boss (stepdad) to take me to the ER, and he had me SIT because i was going into shock, so I did, and kept water running over it to wash out whatever crap could have gotten into it. He took me to the ER, and the doc there got me xrayed, then pulled out a big long needle and filled it with water so he could wash the wound out (I thought he was gonna jam that sucka in there... he didnt :) ) As he was stitching up the anasthesia kept wearing off, and by the second time it wore off, he only had 2 stitches to go, and I said "Forget the needle, just keep sewing"

Needless to say, i forced myself to do PT on that finger the 2nd day out, because I sure need that finger for typing and signing (yes, I know sign language).

One accident is enough to hammer home the importance of safety for me. At this one job I worked at in California, I was the only one during the 8month period that I worked there, who was accident free, with the exception of the boss.

AC-130U

My opinion is anything that moves under power is or has the potential to be dangerous. In my shop the most potential for de-limbing or even death is my vertical turret lathe. 36" chuck, 25 HP motor geared down at the chuck to speeds from 3.5 RPM to 112 RPM. The operators controls are well away from the spinning chuck but still the "WHAT IF" factor is there. About the most scary is if chips begin to birdsnest, then a big wad turn loose & hang in the chuck somewhere. Then you can't get close enough to even hit the emergency shut down. After this happened 1 time I mounted a secondary shut down about 10' away from the machine.

My uncle worked in a rubber products plant where they produce floor mats & all sorts of other rubber items. Some part of the process required steam autoclave. These autoclaves are around 12' in diameter & the lid attaches like a stovetop pressure cooker 1/8 of turn or so. Somehow one of those 12' diameter lids came off under pressure & it sailed across the plant like a giant frisbee. In it's flight the lid struck a towmotor that someone happened to be driving by. As luck had it the operator of the forklift was the only injury. It was a broken tail bone when he landed flat on his rear on the concrete floor. The lid off the autoclave literally knocked the lift right out from underneath the operator. The lid & the towmotor were long gone before gravity pulled him to the ground. Much like one of Wil-E-Coyote's failed Acme inventions......

Thought I'd share a couple of piccies with you, the first of which made my toes curl and say"nooooo...", the second just beggars belief.. yes those are actualy truck wheel bolts.

How many amp's are the lugbolt's good for?!!!As for the rock hope osha can't find this guy.

Those bolts are known as 11,000 amp time delay slow blow elements made for reverse arching the high lines back to the transformer. er.... maybe not!

The fusebox one made me laugh. A story I was told when I was a little kid was that someone once got shot in the knee because they replaced a glass fuse in their truck with a .22 LR bullet, the circuit shorted, and the bullet went off.
I don't know how much truth there was to this, but the bolts reminded me of it.

Louis Black tells the same story [alledgedly read from a newspaper].However, in his version it hits a little farther up [knee would only be.. well.. half way there..:)], if you search the net you'll find it.. I nearly wet my pants its so hilarious.. :D

Sorry.. TOTALLY offtopic...

Jerry

The guys at Myth Busters declared that story a myth, but it seems possible to me. The story they used was a guy's headlight fuse kept blowing in a Toyota truck so he replaced it with a .22 round and it got so hot that it went off, shooting him in the gonads. The Myth Busters couldn't get it to work, so they claimed it "busted", but it sounds remotely possible to me.

Last year, my shed got struck by lightening. The unfortunate item to provide the first ground path was a contractor's sized tube of adhesive. Directly above this, in the rafters, was about 1500 .22 long rifle and magnum rounds, about 150 12ga shells (slugs and shot) and about 400 .380 rounds - all older ammo. Almost all of the rounds popped off in the ensuing fire and I found rounds everywhere during the clean-up. The fire fighters told me they couldn't figure out what the popping noise was at first. The bottom line is that unless the round is contained, the velocity of either side of the round is relatively minimal, but I would not want to test that theory.

Scott

Thought I'd share a couple of piccies with you, the first of which made my toes curl and say"nooooo...", the second just beggars belief.. yes those are actualy truck wheel bolts.

Well whoever it was did follow the instructions in most fuse cabinets that read; "Do not replace specified fuses with fuses of a higher capacity". I have yet to see any prohibition specifying wheel bolts.

... Almost all of the rounds popped off in the ensuing fire and I found rounds everywhere during the clean-up. The fire fighters told me they couldn't figure out what the popping noise was at first. The bottom line is that unless the round is contained, the velocity of either side of the round is relatively minimal, but I would not want to test that theory.

Scott

Minmal in the sense that the velocity of shrapnel from a hand grenade is minimal. Maybe nowhere near the muzzle velocity of a high powered rifle but even 10% of that is moving rather fast.

Hi Tom,
I have read that most serious wood working injuries occur as a result of table saws. These are probably the most prevelant free standing machines in use except maybe the drill press. I am familiar with an individual who is single handedly trying to make table saws (among other machines) safe. Check out this site:

http://www.sawstop.com/video.htm

That is the smartest thing I've seen in a long time.

That is the smartest thing I've seen in a long time.

Yeah the sawstop is pretty cool, I wanted one as my first table saw, but they wont sell it to me because they dont have a distributor here and can't give after sales service. :(

Minmal in the sense that the velocity of shrapnel from a hand grenade is minimal. Maybe nowhere near the muzzle velocity of a high powered rifle but even 10% of that is moving rather fast.

Reguardless, that hot dog looked in good shape, didn't it?

Hi Tom,
I am familiar with an individual who is single handedly trying to make table saws (among other machines) safe. -Doug


Perhaps, given the topic, "single handedly" is an unfortunate choice of words.

Best wishes

Martin

The scariest thing at where I work, at least with the CNC machines, would have to be the 4" hogger, its 4" knife blade with a 2.5" or so hogger at the end of a inch and a half steel extension. overall, its about 5" 8" long, not counting taper.

Doesnt sound so bat till I mention its in a 5 axis router with a BT30 spindle. Any more then 30% on the spindle (6500RPM or so) and it sounds like the machine is going to vibrate itself to pieces, all in an open machine...


Other then that I guess the management is pretty scary :p

How about a 12 inch wood jointer. That runs on a 6 in. leather belt off of a tractor. Sissy man, don't hit a knot. Be fearless the guy I help with it because I have the tractor said his Grandfather trimed 3 fingers on it. Ya-hoo.

Those old belt driven saw's were crazy. My pop's and I have cut many a cord of wood back in the day. He had a ~36" blade on a FarmAll-M [narrow front end, old 30's tractor]. It ran maybe 300 rpm [guessing] scary as all heck, but it sure could cut wood. It had teeth on it that were ~1.5" long.. no guards.. anywhere.. I don't know how anyone didn't lose a hand let alone fingers..

I get chill's just thinking about it..

Jerry

Well a jointer planer is damb scary, lost 2 fingertips to mine, which now sits unplugged in the corner of my shop :)

Every say to yourself i'm too tired to work? but you keep going? or just plain in attention? well i learned to respec a 5" chuck on a mini mill ... not alot of gap between the jaws and bed at that rate, where's mu chip brush? oh well i'll just wipe those chips out of the , where'd my finger tip go ?!?

My dad's a general contractor, he's got all kinds of "war" scars, was chatting to his partner about my tips from the planer incident and he stated showing me how chop saws and tables saws have treated him ......

well as i type here with one hand due to a bandage on my other i remember saying to my wife as we were driving to the hospital last night, it's really a question of when i was gonna do that .... lol .... the more complacent we get the more apt we are to do something bad, atleast i still got all my parts :)

But i do feel better reading all these stores, and knowing i'm not the only dumbass... all i kept doing was calling myself a stupid idiot for getting a finger crunched by my lathe chuck...

anyhow there are bound to be alot of typos weird to type with one hand....

Biggest thing I learned in my relatively injury free journey through the indusrtial world is to never get complacent or too comfortable with what you are doing if there is any chance of injury.

Several close calls on serious injury, several hits on minor injury. Still have all digits. Lucky man, me.

this has been interesting reading for me. As apprentices we all had long hair and generally had it in nets, but not always, one of the guys was oiling a shaft on a bench of winding machines and managed to pull a piece, about 3cm round, of hair out.
Myself, I've had my worst injury with a drill press with a foot switch for on/off.
I was changing the belt position on the cone pulley and, typically rushing at the end of the day, stepped on the switch and my little finger went around the pulley under the belt. lots of stitches and still wont straighten properly, but works okay.
The Motto I guess is BE CAREFUL , DONT RUSH

I just noticed yesterday that I've gotten into a very bad habit when grinding. I put my protective goggles on my head, then my hearing protection, then walk around doing whatever. When starting to grind I turn the grinder on, then lift it up in my hand and pull my goggles over my eyes. Was doing this yesterday when I stumbled on the grinder cable, and saw the spinning flap wheel about an inch from the corner of my right eye :eek:. Stupid. Definately wont happen again. Nuff said. :eek:

Man, the saw stop is cool but it wrecks your 100 dollar blade and you know if you had one you would definitely want to "test" it.

My worst injury is an inch and a half long scar on my thumb that took 15 stitches to fix. Now the nail grows out funny the cuticle looks like hell.

When I am not paying attention or cold I find myself giving everyone the thumbs up as all that scar tissue straightens out my thumb.

Which spinning machine o'death is responsible for this?

A 3/4 inch Sandvick wood chisel powered by my own muscles.

:wave: :cheers: HELLO THERE ALL....WITH AGE COMES SOME PRETTY GRUESOME REALITIES...: I have tried to keep up...but falling behind on my reading, etc.... I am really glad to see that this thread is alive and well...and maybe as a result, someone out there having read it is alive and well.... ye know, in addition to all these good inputs, do we have some room for a few stories where having read this thread, someone was alert and was able to save their buts as a result....would love to read this kind of input as well .... this is a good thread and exchange..... :cheers: Love ya all... you know how i mean it...and only a machinist will under stand.....lol keep up a good thing...

I taught machining for years, had one student that reached behind a turning half inch end mill to get the next tool. Said he didn't even feel it take his finger off. He was lucking it didn't take his hand. Spent the rest of the day in the hospital with him. Sure did teach me to pay attention.

I was working in a shop as a lathe operator and they transfered a kid from drill presses to lathes.
His first day i noticed he had worn a long shirt untucked and warned him to tuck it in..He shruged and kept working.
i told him again"man you need to tuck that shirt in",he just chuckled so i told the foreman..The foreman told me he would take care of it ,just go back to work.
About 15 minutes later i had to run over and shut of the new guys lathe because his shirt got caught in the threading screw on his machine and was pulling him in.

About two weeks later...same kid.I was suppose to show the kid how to thread 3 inch dia tubing,the tubes were about 4 feet long so we had to use a steadyrest.
The kid puts the tube in the chuck and tightens it as tight as he could,then he slides the steadyrest up about 6 inches from the end of the tube and tightens it down.
I tell the kid thats not how you set up a steadyrest..we have short tubes to set it up with.The kid says he knows what he's doing and he brings the pads up to the tube and tightens them then swings the top over and locks it.
By this time i'm going crazy and i yell at him....dude your about to get hurt or hurt someone!
Luckly everyone heard it and had time to look before he started the lathe up.
The lathe made about 10 revolutions and the tube walked out of the chuck,one of the jaws caught the tube and slung the end around and it bounced off the bed of the lathe.
I shut the lathe off and told the foreman if he wanted him trained he would have to train him.

Oh and as far as the scariest tool or machine?
I have never been as scared of any machine as i am of some of the people running them.

Mazaholic
Amen To That!!!!!!!!!!!

Very good thread. I have only read the first few pages since I can only stomach so much. Certain images get stuck in my head, and hard to removed them. 13 years ago I saw a car run over a group of people that were sitting on a curb. I can still hear the screams and see them getting tossed like rag dolls.

I am lucky enough to have never seen anything major, in the machine shop.

The bandsaw does scare me pretty good, though. We made kant-twist clamps in shop class. When I was on the bandsaw I kept having visions of cutting my finger off.

Another thing that shook me up pretty good was once on the surface grinder. Turned off the chuck to remove my part and was about to take my hand and brush off all the dust on the chuck. Luckily, I saw a brush just before and used that. Hard to explain, but probably would have messed up my hand. From the angle I was standing/looking, couldn't see the wheel and was pretty spaced out from grinding the past 60 minutes. Would have brushed my hand across the whole chuck and right into the wheel. Not sure what it would have done, but it was about .250 above the chuck. After I swept the brush across it and the bristles went under the wheel was when I realized what I almost did. Actually left class early since I kept having visions of my hand getting pulled and crushed under the wheel.

Our cnc instructor told us a story about a guy that was running a very big cnc lathe. He erased some code that prevents the spindle from going over a certain rpm. Don't remember exactly what he said flew off, but something flew off and sliced off his arm.

Oh and as far as the scariest tool or machine?
I have never been as scared of any machine as i am of some of the people running them.

Your comment got me to thinking about my own past instances where this is soo valid.

Great stories and a great thread to have for all of us to read, including those just getting into the field.


Sometimes you can even be as carefull as all possible yet still get nailed like I did about 30 years ago by another Machinist who, in their laziness, was defeating a safety design.

Unfortunately for me, that person neglected to tell me, or anyone else for that matter, they had permenantly engaged the spring-loaded crank handle on the big Kearney-Trecker mill with a washer stack and a bolt in the end. That's fine on a Bridgeport with worn-out cogs but like most big manual mills - the KT has 'rapid traverse'.
I pulled the rapid handle to run the knee up closer to the spindle and proceeded to get hit 4 times before I knew what was happening. Felt like the old 800 pound Gorilla got a hold of me, but with a big hammer hitting me real fast.
Luckily , I didn't catch one on the head as well as being young and tough back then. Caught one in the ribs, one on my shoulder, one on the bicep, then the forearm. Nothing got broke but I sure was hurting for a week.

Another time I had a large water valve casting on a King 42" VTL. It was about 4 feet tall with around a 32 inch bore. We had to do an 2" wide I.D. groove for the gate and the only way to see what was going on inside was to stand on a ladder and lean over to peek into the bore. There were very few DROs on the machines so it was all done with indicators back then on the traverse and ram.
Making it short "STUPID ME" should have cut the .750 all-thread rods just long enough to clamp the part and not sticking up the inch or so above the clamps. Deburring the ends might have helped too! Those burrs just love to grab t-shirts and fling you off to the floor from about 6 feet up like a rag doll. Once again I was lucky it didn't hold on to me dragging me thru that small gap between the casting and the rear of the machine.

about Crank-handles... (nuts)

where i used to work, we had some old TOS milling machines..
rapid feed of the table z-axis was done by pushing a button on the mill head switchboard.. too bad the handles were hit by a Forklift some times, and they would jam sometimes, instead of sliding back, they would stay in the notches..
if you didn't check that.. you'd get Kicked in the nuts big time.. those Z-axis cranks are quite long, because of the weight of the table.. needless to say, if they were spinning along in rapid movement.. boy would that hurt...(nuts)(nuts)

Your comment got me to thinking about my own past instances where this is soo valid.



I have many reasons for the comment.
One instance that i wasn't dirrectly involved in.
When i first started running lathes,i witnessed an operator leave a chuck key in a lathe,when he started the lathe the key flew about 50 feet and almost hit another operator in the head...It took three of us to hold back the guy that almost got hit, and the operator got fired.
From that point forward i made it one of my habits to never let go of a chuck key while it's in the chuck...A habit everyone should practice,with your hand on the key it is unlikly you will turn the lathe on, or even be able to.
There is no acceptable reason to put a chuck key in a chuck and let go of it.

I have many reasons for the comment.
One instance that i wasn't dirrectly involved in.
When i first started running lathes,i witnessed an operator leave a chuck key in a lathe,when he started the lathe the key flew about 50 feet and almost hit another operator in the head...It took three of us to hold back the guy that almost got hit, and the operator got fired.
From that point forward i made it one of my habits to never let go of a chuck key while it's in the chuck...A habit everyone should practice,with your hand on the key it is unlikly you will turn the lathe on, or even be able to.
There is no acceptable reason to put a chuck key in a chuck and let go of it.

You're absolutely right about that.. it once happened to me, forgetting about the Chuck key... 23 years ago, no one got hurt, and it hasn't happened to me eversince...

personally.. i wouldn't hold back anyone who just got missed by a chuck key.. really i wouldn't...

Something intersting i've been around power tools all my life, my dad was a contractor, and i was running a plastic fab shop from my garage, well house burn't down 5 months ago, due to an electrical fire from my freezer.... anyhow haven't been using tools on a constant basis, had to use my dads miter saw the other day found myself staring at the blade with all due respect.....

Familiarity mixed with complacency are dangerous......

OOOOHH yeah Arie. Hurts just thinking about it. That would most likely smart just a bit and affect a guys' romantic life for a while.

I got plenty more where that came from. Not me though.

Engine lathe this time at the same shop the rapid handle got me.

I was having a smashing good time running a Blanchard grinder in another part of the shop so I didn't actually see what went on. But from the sounds echoing around the building over my machine I could just tell it wasn't a good thing.

A machinist a few years older than I was using a Cincinatti Hydro-Shift. To this day I can't vision why he'd have a 1 inch CRS bar stuck out 6(six) feet only supported by the tailstock center and the chuck. Maybe he was going to just polish it with emery or something.
This type of lathe had a large handwheel on the headstock to change spindle speeds automatically that had a tendancy to NOT WORK most of the time. Most guys in the shop already knew it didn't work and would get stuck in whatever RPM it was last used at despite selecting a new setting. Apparently he didn't know or just forgot. It would go thru all the normal motions as though it was changing speeds. The chuck would rock back and forth but you never knew for sure 'til you flipped it on.

Yep he flipped it on alright. It spooled up to around 1500 rpm in an instant. Naturally that 1 inch bar is going to start whipping at the middle first shortening it's length enough for it to come out of the center... which it did. It beat him to the ground enough he had to be carted off to the hospital. The bar still in the chuck though but looking like a pretzel. He finally came back to work in a couple of weeks with the nastiest bruise I've ever seen. His whole left side was one huge bruise!! :eek:

In high school they had a ultra high speed belt sander with roughly a six foot belt. It had a fairly large chunk out of it but i didn't know any better at the time and fired it up. Needless to say as soon as my part hit it, there was a loud boom, it flew out, hit me square in the face and knocked me backwards off of my feet and flat onto my back!

The Tool Changer On My Bt50 Taper ,no Enclosure, Vertical Mill,especialy When The Spindle Wouldn,t Stay Put And It Would Throw Tools Out

The Tool Changer On My Bt50 Taper ,no Enclosure, Vertical Mill,especialy When The Spindle Wouldn,t Stay Put And It Would Throw Tools Out

if it does that.. maybe there's an encoder that is not functioning properly, i'd have a mechanic take a look..

my biggest scare, is machines not working properly, and no action is taken to repair.. people just working with it...

It Doesn't Do It Any More I Fixed It It Had A Broken Wire To The Spindle Orentation Pickup And Would Drift To The Right

It Doesn't Do It Any More I Fixed It It Had A Broken Wire To The Spindle Orentation Pickup And Would Drift To The Right

I guess the tool throwing contest has ended LOL. I have seen CAT 50 Tools thrown across a shop buy a new Mazak Horizontal. That wasn't a pleasant experience.

My dad told me a story once- he swore it was true and I have no reason to disbeleive him... why wearing safety helmets is rather important in quarries:

My dad's retired now, but some 5 years ago he was the electrician for about 5 or six quarries in Scotland- he used to fix all the big motors on conveyor belts and stuff like that.

One of the biggest things he used to work on was the crushers- these are basicaly a big square funnel with an opening at the top of about 20 feet narrowing down to about a foot square. The sides vibrate, driven by incredibly powerful motors, that crush big boulders (about 6 foot diameter) into smaller smaller boulders then rocks, then sand which they sell to the building industry (that's the basics to it anyway).

Well, sometimes the big boulders get stuck and jammed. What you're SUPPOSED to do is turn the machine off, get a big long iron pole, rope yourself off and poke and prod the boulder trying to turn it.

But, of course, this is time consuming, so one (as it turned out rather lucky) chap decided to poke about between the boulder edge and the crusher plate as it was vicously vibrating with a 10 foot solid iron pole.

Needless to say, the pole wedged between the rock and the crusher plate- the end he was holding accellerated from zero to god knows what velocity and battered him round the head (he was wearing a safety helmet) knocking him unconscious. He fell into the crusher as the boulder was pulverised and the iron rod flew out the bottom.

Now here's the bit that makes you go "Jesus!"- he was stuck upside down in the (still operating) crusher with his head stuck in the 1 foot square bit. Each time the crusher squashed his head it would "pop" out of the safety hat and each time it let go he would fall back down.

It took 10 mins before anyone realised he was gone (there was no stuff coming out the bottom of the crusher).

He actualy survived so i can't nominate him for a Darwin award!

I swear this is true as my father told me it.

Oh! another one I remember!

The sand they made was sold by the ton, so if it was wet you'd be selling water too and customers wouldn't be too happy.

So they had these massive cylindrical furnaces that dried the sand prior to despatch (these things were like 10 feet tall and 30 feet long)... temperatures were not quite high enough to melt sand, but were certainly high enough to make you go "ouch" if caught in one.

The safety interlocks were, of course there for a reason. And... were of course defeated by an ingeneous chap who decided it would be easier to clean this prticulary nasty device without the safety interlocks being engaged.

I can only immagine his thought processes as he heard the high pressure gas hiss and glimpsed the small cobalt blue pilot flame flicker to life.

Sorry for the lack of details.. will ask me dad tonight about it.

Hi Iman, I worked on the mines in South West Africa, and we had the rotary bowl crushers for crushing the conglomerate prior to screening.
Whenever we had to work on any of the plant machinery we tied a Danger board to the switch gear, and it was holy orders and understood by one and all that you never removed a danger board unless it was your own one.
Often with a number of people on the job there would be 4 or 5 boards all tied to the switch gear.
Sometimes when we had to get into the tube mills to inspect the liners it was a nerve wracking business, when you had to spend a couple of hours knee deep in boulders, a foot in diametre, while the mill tube was slowly rotated to inspect the iron liners on the walls. I never want to do that again.
Ian.

Hi Tom,
I have read that most serious wood working injuries occur as a result of table saws. These are probably the most prevelant free standing machines in use except maybe the drill press. I am familiar with an individual who is single handedly trying to make table saws (among other machines) safe. Check out this site:

http://www.sawstop.com/video.htm

I think there are a lot of people out there that would use his device if they were aware of it.

Cyanide?! Hardening steel? Man.

As far as the most dangerous tools go, I can't think of a specific (they have all scared the cr*p out of me from time to time) But what sticks in my mind are the older tools we scrounge or inherit. A lot of these never had proper guards or the guards have been removed. Lost a heart shape chunck of scalp (it grew back) about the size of a dime to an old drill press. The spindle was exposed in a couple of places up through the the head casting and I leaned in a little too close to look down the hole. More embarassing than painful but that machine has a clear plastic guard on it, now. -Doug
SawStop looks excellent - thanks for the tip.

Young 18-21 year old female drivers using a cell phone, putting on make-up and left for their destination 10 minures after they should have. Scares the crap out of me.

In the shop....that 6" grinder that is too easy to flip on, and use.

As I remember the Sawstop people tried unsuccessfully to:

A: sell their braking system to the tool maunfacturing industry. It was rejected as being too expensive (in retooling to add the device to curent saws) and too expensive (the cartridge that has to be replaced when the saw "stops" was a couple of hundred dollars.

B: After those rejections, the they tried to force industry to buy their product by lobbying congress to enact a law requiring all saws to have a braking system that matched their specifications.

Didn't work.

While the table saw is dangerous... it is not, I think, the most dangerous of the tools in the shop. The ones in which one moves the blade into the work, particularly toward oneself (radial arm saw, chop box) and those that seem "harmless" (bandsaw, drill press, disc sander) are much more of threat in my opinion.

"'Think' before you cut." and "Listen to the inner voice." (I know that last one sounds all "new age" and stuff but I am of the opinion that many of us perceive an accident is about to happen just before it does.

ha -
how 'bout bleary-eyed housewife on the early-morning autobahn, swatting kids in the back seat at 160 kph, hair in curlers, blinking against the smoke of the cigarette epoxied to the lower lip...

in the shop i'm not too worried;
being a Practicing Paranoid i take all precautions available - enough that i know i'm as safe as i'm gonna get.

First calcum cyanide is used to case harden mild steel.
Now for your question
I think the most dangerous tool in my shop is the band saw. Why?
Because it does not seem to be doing anything (the blade is just a blur)
So no one has any respect for it. Everyone thinks they can run it and it will take off your fingers or your whole hand in a heartbeat.
I once took a class in shop safety and they taught us that the most dangerous thing in a shop was ambivalence. That is the fact that people get used to what they are doing and forget how dangerous it can be.

I worked several years ago in a fab shop that had this huge drill press with two smaller ones on each side. One day I'm drilling on a small one and the guy next to me on the huge one makes the mistake of wearing gloves while using the drill press. He instinctivly reached in to brush some chips off while the drill was still running with his gloved hand. He now only has four fingers on that hand, the bit caught his glove thumb, wrapped it up around the bit with his thumb inside. The drill never even slowed down as it pulled his thumb off. Very serious injury. I NEVER wear gloves around a drill press, or anything else that spins for that matter. Ron

That reminds me of an accident I had to clean up as an apprentice. A slight fellow 5'2" may be 71/2 stone was operating a big radial drill. Probably 10hp. He was drilling holes with a 2 7/8" drill running about 3/32" feed per rev in a block of steel. To break the swarf from the drill we would normally knock it away with a piece of flat bar about 3' long. For some reason he decided to pull a piece of swarf away from the job with his gloved hand. He was wearing welding gauntlets and he got caught up on the swarf this literally dragged him around the drill and over the job many times. It severely mangled his hand and arm, broke his collar bone in several places amongst other things. To this day I will never forget the scream. He survived but never returned to work.

On a brighter note (But more scary for me)a few years ago we had an operator misload a casting into a cnc lathe. 17"diameter about 20kgs running at 1900rpm. He must have been in dream land as it would have been shaking and making all sorts of noises as it was being machined(chair) , it eventually came out of the chuck and got caught between the door and the chuck. It literally blew the 100kg door off the machine and it landed about 2.5 meters away. The part got airborne and landed in the back of the machine I was servicing (10 meters away) still spinning at what looked to me like 2000+rpm. I hugged the floor for 20 seconds until it stopped. It took many beers to relax that day after work.

I believe that the scariest things are co workers. I once had to get someone sacked for putting a light oxy torch between his legs whilst he was moving a job around. I cautioned him 3 times that day for doing this eventually he burnt his calfs quite badly. A machine will only do what it does you can never preempt what people do.
Daza

A machine will only do what it does you can never preempt what people do.
Daza

Just like "Guns don't kill people, people Kill people".. We had a fella about a year and a half ago try and push a die back up into the top holder on an old cincinati break. I think it's a 150t unit. Big old thing made in the 20's that actually has the concrete floor cast around it. Once the operator push's the foot peddle the break cycles and there is no stoping it. He and another fella were bending some gauge steel and the die started to slip out because they didn't have it in tight enough. He reaches to push it back in [it only weigh's 2-300lb's so I don't know how he thought he could w/ one hand but..] and at the same time the break operator cycles the break.. kid lost two finger off his hand.. broke every bone below the wrist...It was just a mashed stump when he headed for the hospital..what a mess. He's back working here now.. but I'm still not convinced he learned his lesson..

Hello. First off this is my first post so I figured it would be the apropriate forum.

I used to work at a Steak House and we had a Vertical Bandsaw with blades made for ripping threw meat and thick bone. The meat cutter who was a 25 year vetren turned away for half a second and cut his pinky and ring finger off on his left hand. I have been leary of Vertical bandsaws ever since. (I am a Student Machinist now go figure)

We also have to DOAll Horizontal bandsaws in the Stock Room. First day of this term I am in with a bunch of kids . (I say kids becouse I am just now going back to school and there is 10 years between me and the next oldest student in the class) One ofthem was trying to lower the arm of the bandsaw by HANGING off of it while the blade was in motion.

For those unfamilure there is a little knob you turn to engage the saw blade and feed. These Saws are the size of my escort.

Other then that alot of the younger students have a tendency to leave the chuck key in the lathe. Not a problem with the newer lathes and the chuck shield but the older ones have led to some scary incidents.

First term I had a near miss with a 1''x2''x3'' hardened Tap guide on a Precision grinder. The guy on the grinder one over from mine forgot to engage the magnetic chuck after Micing the part and the guard on the back of the machine was loose. He then went to take to deep a cut the part flew threw the guard hit the concrete wall and ricochet straight at my head. Luckily I had already narrowly missed getting hit by a lathe Chuck key the day before so as soon as I heard the boom of hit ripping threw the table guard I hit the ground.

I am sure I could come up with more but thats enough for an introductory Post. =)

Hey Guys... Dont let this thread die....

We used to use TriChloroEthane to clean lenses- it's a degreaser and will disolve the pitch which we blocked the lenses up with. Anyways, the women who did the final cleaning of the lenses had used the stuff for so long that the skin on their hands was almost translucent... apparently that stuff degreases your fat from under the skin. Scary!

hmmm so one can loose fat by applying Trichloroethane... All Fat boys get the recipe..hehehe

Einsten said that there are only 2 infinite things: The universe and human stupidity... and he wasn't sure about the first one.

I have a long list of my own stupid acts. Fortunately, I am really lucky, and I have no things to regret but the embarrasement and scares.

When I was 5 years old I remember that I was on my knees... over a grinder, then I pushed the trigger by curiosity and got both legs burned and bleeding a in a second.

In highschool I learned how to make hydrogen with calcium carbide and water, so I put a friend to blow in a pipe while I ignited the other pipe so we have an hydrogen torch. When my friend tried to breath and stopped blowing, the flame went trough the pipe and exploded the glass container in his face. Pretty scaring but no injuries.

In my first job on a shop, I put a 1 inch diameter bar hanging out 4 feet at the rear of a CNC lathe, as soon as I pushed the green button the lathe went to 4000 rpm and we had a big bullet bouncing at the walls of the shop. No casualties.

Once I was trying to adjust the flame of the oxyacetilene torch while chatting, doing jokes and not putting attention to the job. When my boss shouted at me I realized that somehow I was ponting the torch directly to the tanks!

Another time we put a 1 ton mold over a slippery and not levelled table. Few minutes later the big mold landed a few centimeters from a fellow's feet without previous warning.

Just 2 months ago I tried to use a new and cheap 3 ton chain hoist to dowload a 2,800 kg lathe. The hook broke off just before we moved the trailer, so the fall was 2 inches not 50. I will post a pic of the damn hook.

The list can continue so I can demonstrate that I am the luckiest man on earth... besides the most stupid. In my favor I can only say that I learn from my mistakes and only do the new ones.

Be careful guys

Everardo

Erd, all of the above makes my blood run cold. You are one lucky guy!

The Oxy one particularly makes my toes curl.

Yeah!
Flammable gasses and inmature people shouldn't be together.
Is very different to lose your own fingers than to kill everybody the shop. :withstupi
By fortune I learned mi lesson. Now I watch Engineering Disasters at Discovery channel once a while.

Here is my recently freaked out:

Dear All,

This is a grisly thread, but I think it serves a useful purpose.

Thank Heaven's I've been lucky so far.

A couple of years ago, we were doing some stuff on a construction site, and had to go through a "safety induction" course. Coming from a two-man outfit, we thought "what a waste of time". The course comprised of being given a twenty minute talk by a free-swearing Scot who had seen it all, in a temporary site building. On the walls of the site hut were about ten photographs.

They made a lasting impression...

A post-mortem X-ray of somebody's skull who had been on the receiving end of a house brick kicked off some scaffolding from five floors up. No hard hat.

A pre-op picture of somebody's eye socket after their angle grinder wheel had decided to disintegrate. No guard in place.

The other pictures were not for the squeamish.

That Scotsman did me a favour. Keep posting....


Best wishes,

Martin

Here's another nasty one. One of the old-timers in the shop for some odd reason decided to pull off a steel shaving on his manual LeBlond lathe that was turning about 2000 RPM. After the EMS guys picked the hand pieces out of the chip tray, they were able to cart him off in shock. After 3 operations he has regained some use of the hand.

I didn't see this first hand but heard the story years later. A guy I used to work with was running an engine lathe. He used the overhead crane to load a big chunk of steel in the chuck. Tightened everything up real good then hit the switch. Only thing is he forgot to remove the hoist chain which proceeded to wrap around the chuck and started to pull the lathe up off the floor. They say that everyone in the shop was running for cover except for one guy who was trying to hit the E-stop with a long stick.

Alright, this didn't happen in a machine shop but I witnessed this when I was about 17 (315 dog years ago). I was a modelmaker apprentice at a TV manufacturer that boasted the "Quality goes in before the name goes on". There was a "prankster" that worked on one of the black and white TV assembly lines that would grab the second anode cap on a TV chassis, turn the set on, and on his insulated pad, he would charge himself up to about 16,000 volts. This was beyond eerie as this area of assembly was done in near darkness. The dude would develop an ozone glow around his ears, lips, and nose. Then, when some unsuspecting person would walk past his area, he would reach out, touch, and scare the heck out of them. This went on for over a year, and it wasn't an every day thing, maybe once a month, but he had been warned by several of his co-workers. Well, if you are a fossil like me, you remember that color TV came out to the home market around 1964. Yep, you guessed it, we made the switch from the 16,000 volt black and white high voltage sweeps to the 25,000 volt color sweep circuits. The prankster not realizing that the breakdown voltage of the mat he was standing on was about 20,000 volts did his old trick. The guys in his group watched in awe as this clown bounced around for about 30 seconds when someone finally walked over and tripped the breaker. The prankster never did the trick again, and I'll never forget it.

I once read a article where a guy kept blowing fuses in his car. He then had the brilliant idea to replace a blown fuse with a .22 rifle shell. Apparently it worked for about an hour but when driving down the road he was wounded in the foot form schrapnel....

Personal experience. I worked with a guy who we named hacksaw. He got this name because he replaced a large blade fuse on a 480vac transformer with you guessed it. A hacksaw blade. All because he didn't have the correct fuse and he didn't want equipment down all night..... The results were incredible to say the least. I replaced the transformer the next day and spent a week rewiring machinery and electrical panels.

There is one born every minute.....

I once read a article where a guy kept blowing fuses in his car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_1)#Frog_Giggin.27

This article was in the Abilene Daily Tribune sometime during the 1980s. I cut this article out and used it for an industrial safety class when I was in college it had a persons name in the article.

As it was documented by a local newspaper I would have the source is as reliable as Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great source for information. I edited the Wiki page as follows.

" Frog Giggin'
Myth statement Status Notes
A group of hillbillies use a live .22LR cartridge as a makeshift replacement for a burned-out fuse in their truck, but while the truck is driving, the bullet heats up enough to discharge, hitting driver in the groin and causing enough damage to require surgery. Busted/ Plausible The bullet did work as a replacement fuse, however when a short circuit was created, the wiring burnt up and the bullet did not fire. When the wiring was upgraded to a higher gauge, the bullet did fire out of the fusebox, but not with enough velocity to cause any serious injury. Though both Adam and Jamie admitted that the myth was plausible from their tests, they had to call it busted due to a lack of conclusive evidence, and the fact that they didn't have a "plausible" verdict during the first season.

"This really happened in Abilene Texas sometime during the 1980s. It was in the local newspaper the Abilene Daily Tribune. The reason I remember this story is because I cut out the article and used it for an industrial safety class I had in college. Back then we didn't have the internet as a source of information so we had to use newspapers... and such as sources. I remember the article had the persons name and the hospital where he was taken."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_1)#Frog_Giggin.27

i saw one just this morning came through my email at work a guy in either sf or sandiego was running an egine lathe while wearing a long sleeve sweatshirt, a big puffy coat and long hair. the picture were enough to make me throw up. i dont understand people.

i saw one just this morning came through my email at work a guy in either sf or sandiego was running an egine lathe while wearing a long sleeve sweatshirt, a big puffy coat and long hair. the picture were enough to make me throw up. i dont understand people.

Wow, guess some people are born to be accident victims...

Wow, guess some people are born to be accident victims...

A guy I work with often wears long sleeves while running a mill and a lathe...he's old enough, been in the trade long enough....he should know better. I'm just gonna hate the paperwork and all the safety features that'll have to be added when he ends up getting hurt.

Having just received my Smithy 1324 lathe of course I was all excited. I cleaned it up and was ready to turn it on.

Never in a million years did I think to check the chuck mounting to the backing plate. It was torqued tightly from all i could tell with my wrenches.

After running it for 15 minutes I noticed a slight wobble in the chuck. Before i could react ( in super slow motion ) the chuck starts spinning right at me through the air. I had to perform a matrix-like move to avoid it smacking me dead center.

Still have a scar on my left arm when it grazed. It could have been alot worse. Later found that one of the retaining bolts was cross threaded.

Scrap ribbons are real sharp! 2 severed tendons 1 severed nerve. It looks like I have a full set of 10 but 1 is decoration. I have been kicking my own ass for being so careless since the first pump of blood sprayed across the lathe.

P.S. Anybody have an attempted tendon repair screw up the unaffected fingers? My ring and pinky have been fooked since the repair 1.5 years ago.

Scrap ribbons are real sharp! 2 severed tendons 1 severed nerve. It looks like I have a full set of 10 but 1 is decoration. I have been kicking my own ass for being so careless since the first pump of blood sprayed across the lathe.

P.S. Anybody have an attempted tendon repair screw up the unaffected fingers? My ring and pinky have been fooked since the repair 1.5 years ago.

This reminds me of an incident some years ago where I used to work.........
A newbie was cleaning out a very old "pegboard" type of lathe, when he spotted a strand of swarf. He grabs the strand and gives it a good yank, expecting it to come right out, no-one having informed this chap of the dangers of "stringy" swarf. You can guess the rest. I wasn't witness to this, but I saw the associated pool of blood at the scene and the trail leading up towards the first aid kit. He kept all his fingers, but suffered physical problems and had a long break from work. I still get cold shivers thinking about this one.

Ouch! that piccy just reminds me of why I am so catious around a machine that is designed to cut metal- flesh is nothing to them!

Whenever I see a long strand of swarf tentatively creeping out from the tool/ part interface like an octupus' tentacle I tend to regard it as an evil little barsteward which wants to grap my overalls and then wrap itself round the chuck whilst gleefuly giggling "should have been more careful" *steps carefuly backwards whilst aiming a kick at the E-Stop*

I view my machines as out and out EVIL fekers- they sit there all night dreaming up ways to mash eyes, bone and flesh. I swear they converse with each other regarding the best way to acompmlish this. Luckily, or due to my due dillegence, they have not succeded... yet.

Sometimes the "EVIL fekers" have help from the operator, but turn out to not be EVIL after all.

As an apprentice I worked on a lathe with an overhead belt drive. (I'm not really that old, the place just has old machines) To turn the spindle by hand I would reach up and just pull on the big flat belt; belt guards had not yet been invented.

One day I overlooked turning the machine off before grabbing hold of the belt and to this day cannot understand why I still have a left arm.

A very mature and very accomplished journeyman machinist my dad had working for him one day was turning some stainless. The guy was being very attentive and was quite aware of the string chip coming off of the tool, but....

He knew the chip was going down into the sump, but didn't realize that it wasn't breaking up and was looping up back around under the carriage. It snaked up from underneath and wrapped quickly around his right thumb as he fed the carriage.

Luckily for him he managed to stop the machine and feed quickly enough that the chip only cut as deeply as it did, for he almost lost his thumb.

Here was a guy from whom you'd least expect an accident. I still remember vividly to this day that incident, and I still emphasize to students to watch where the chips are going, and "NEVER PULL CHIPS WITH YOUR HANDS!!"

Yeah...the scrap hook was 6 feet away...no such thing as an accident.:confused:

My mangled little friend is a constant reminder.

:cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers:

Hello all, been away a couple years dealin with stuff old folks deal with....

last post nov 2007 for scarey stuff?? you all must have fixed all the scarey situations out there. sure hope so. :cheers: I will bet that with all the jobs being shipped out of the country by the super rich, many of you have went through job changes and this brings the potential for some scarey stuff. I know there are many of you who have been through some scary times on the job and off working with the ever livin machines lets hear about them...best to ya and :cheers:

Head protection.

This guy seems to have the right idea. First you improvise some head protection out of the materials to hand, and then use it to get the job done.

YouTube - Professional brick carrier.

I am gasping in admiration at his skill, and also from his recognition that if he fails to get a few thrown bricks on the top of the stack, it is extremely unlikely that any would fall on his cranium. A good pair of boots would help though.
I would be unprepared to shake his hand, in congratulation, without a bump hat of my own, however.

Give the man a cigar..

Best wishes,

Martin

Good god! that is unbeleivable! I had to watch it 3 times to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing.

No way you'd get away with that in the UK cos you'd need to be wearing a hard hat lol.

Oh, and bye the way, where's his life preserver thingy in case he falls in the water?

Good god! that is unbeleivable! I had to watch it 3 times to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing.

No way you'd get away with that in the UK cos you'd need to be wearing a hard hat lol.

Oh, and bye the way, where's his life preserver thingy in case he falls in the water?

Dear ImanCarrot,

Never mind the life presever thingy... that gang-plank walk looks a major "Working at heights" hazard. Where is his fall arrest harness?

Best wishes,

Martin

I see no regulation footwear, no high viz vest.
I would have video taped that guy too

My least favorite thing and the one that finally got me to wear eye protection on a regualr basis was a car battery.

I was load testing a car battery for a customer without the filler caps on. This was before sealed batteries were in wide spread use. I was getting weird reading from the load tester and I bent over to get a good look at the battery while twisting the positive terminal.
Well I found out the hard way that the terminal was broken inside the battery. It caused a spark internal to the battery and of course it set off the battery like a bomb. I recieved a large dose of battery acid to both eyes and some small pieces of plastic shrapnel to the left eye. My brother inlaw whom I was working for at the time, heard the explosion, came out into the shop, and found me trying to find my way to the sink. He was so frightened that he literaly picked me up and stuck me head first into the wash sink and saved my eyesight. I thank the lord that I still had 20/20 when it was all said and done, but I still spent the next few days with one eye bandaged and the other real sore.

I can still close my eyes and see the fireball erupt from the battery like it was yesterday. I never saw it but was told that the battery looked like a baked potato that had just been opened to let the steam out.

I have been called chicken and other names for being catious and carful over the years but I have never broken a bone and I am still in one peice.

Mike

I see no regulation footwear, no high viz vest.
I would have video taped that guy too

I was thinking more of 'un-secured load'.. I wonder if he fell.. think he'd claim comp for a 'stiff neck'? Or maybe he could claim that he'd been impacted on the work site by an overhead load which fell on him?

I've friends who have traveled to some of the poorer Asian countries and have seen this sorta thing and 50ft away is a brand new Komatsu excavator..
go figure..

Keeps people in work anyway.. :)

Not much scary stories lately, fortunately..

a couple of weeks ago i suffered an injury from a "no-workshop-accident".. gave me more respect though..

As everyone knows, dutch people like, and are quite good at ice-skating, so whenever a winter is cold enough, we go skating on every lake we can.. .

it had been a while since we had such a winter, but this year we were lucky.. so i got out my skates, and went out skating with my girlfriend, all went well, but i noticed my skates could do with a sharpening-job., so a day before i'd planned to go for a Skate-tour of 25 Km's i bought a special grindingstone to resharp my skates, a day later, after 15 Km's i noticed i did a very good job.. there was a crack in the ice, and my right skate got caught in it, and i fell.
during the fall ( i was just ending my right stroke, so i had my left foot next to my right ankle ) i hit my right ankle with my skate.

i got up, and continued skating, still 10 km's to go, when i finished, i thought, well.. lets have a break, and do another 10 Kms, to earn a second medal that day.. i sat down, and a lady beside me turned white, and asked "What's wrong with your right leg??!!"

when i looked down, both my skates were covered in blood, and i had a 1½ Cut right across my right ankle.

apparently, because my skates were that sharp ( razorsharp ) i didn't feel it, after all i had been skating like that for 10 Kms!!..

i don't wear socks in my skates, as socks make the shoes move around your feet, and will cause your feet to freeze. your skin will "Stick"to the shoes, because they sweat a bit, giving friction, but becuase of that, your ankles are exposed.. Kevlar anklewarmers anyone??

You're all flippin' crybabies. In my day, men was tough. Course, I am glad for the advances in machining, and technology in general. It would have been tough to hand write this after I lost my thumb and index, on the left hand. Course I was back at my lathe soon after they took out all them stitches, at least until they put me in the hospital after that lift truck clipped me. It was that Trainee driver that caused it, but them ignorant HR people said she was my fault. Lucky I didn't lose my leg, although the limp won't never go away. Least wise, that's what them doctors are saying.

All that safety crap you're spoutin', it just slow ya down. That chip that caught my eye, it's on the left too. Sorta plucked her right out. But It weren't from not wearin no safety glasses, it were just a freak accident. At least now I don't have ta get no costume at haloween. Always go as a Pirate. Personal Protective Quipment? Don't ya mean Perfect Punishment quipment. Who needs it? Them glasses always gettin lost. Machine Guarding? If ya can't get at it, ya can't fix it. It's them safety people what needs garding. Heck, I had my sleeve caught up one time, I was fixin-on sumpthin or other on a differnt machine, so
I had her turnin'. She just kinda pinched that shirtsleeve lickety-split, like that, I really thoughtshe's gonna rip my arm clean off. The scars just go to proove that I was workin' all the time. I mean, the arthritis, or whatever, makes her hurt nowdays, most mornings since that accident. But like I said, it were an accident, and all them safety thangs ain't gonna stop no accident when she's ready ta bite you.

OK first post on here and not a moment of glory for me.

I am a Design Technology teacher and whilst under pressure, working late and cutting corners whilst using a table saw.... ( you can see whats coming up surely...) As the blood started to drip on the floor, I didn't want to look at what could have been (or been missing) I stopped the class; politely explaining to one kid that "No, I cant cut that board for you right now." and made it to the on site medical centre. A few steritabs later.... Fortunately I made contact with the side of the blade and not the teeth. I have a whole new appreciation for push sticks now!

You're all flippin' crybabies. In my day, men was tough. Course, I am glad for the advances in machining, and technology in general. It would have been tough to hand write this after I lost my thumb and index, on the left hand. Course I was back at my lathe soon after they took out all them stitches, at least until they put me in the hospital after that lift truck clipped me. It was that Trainee driver that caused it, but them ignorant HR people said she was my fault. Lucky I didn't lose my leg, although the limp won't never go away. Least wise, that's what them doctors are saying.

All that safety crap you're spoutin', it just slow ya down. That chip that caught my eye, it's on the left too. Sorta plucked her right out. But It weren't from not wearin no safety glasses, it were just a freak accident. At least now I don't have ta get no costume at haloween. Always go as a Pirate. Personal Protective Quipment? Don't ya mean Perfect Punishment quipment. Who needs it? Them glasses always gettin lost. Machine Guarding? If ya can't get at it, ya can't fix it. It's them safety people what needs garding. Heck, I had my sleeve caught up one time, I was fixin-on sumpthin or other on a differnt machine, so
I had her turnin'. She just kinda pinched that shirtsleeve lickety-split, like that, I really thoughtshe's gonna rip my arm clean off. The scars just go to proove that I was workin' all the time. I mean, the arthritis, or whatever, makes her hurt nowdays, most mornings since that accident. But like I said, it were an accident, and all them safety thangs ain't gonna stop no accident when she's ready ta bite you.


well.. it is true after all.. if you're gonna be dumb, you 'd better be tough...

does it make you feel good?.. having lost pieces of your body?.. walking with a limb?.. yeah.. you're a cool tough guy.. or at least the still functioning part of you that is..

i did have my share of cuts and the occasional blow with a hammer..but after 17 years in the trade, i still have all my fingers, have no visible scars, and both my legs are intact.. guess that makes me a sissy?.. boy am i glad to be a sissy...with all parts of me working...

I think dodean was being humorous; I sure hope dodean was being humorous.:)

ahhh.. such artistic prose.. :D

a few years back i learned a lesson about 4 1/2 angle grinders with cutoff wheels on them. I did have the guard on it, but that didnt help that i was stupid enough to be holding the part i was cutting in one hand and the grinder in the other. well, long story short, the blade bound up in the cut, flung the part and pulled my left thumb pad (the part with the finger print on it) right into the spinning blade.

I never felt a thing, my first clue that i was actually hurt was the blood splatter on my safety glasses. then i looked at my thumb, dropped the grinder and ran in the house. cleaned out the gash in my thumb, only to find out first hand that bone isnt white when its still on the inside of the human body, but more a yellow color.

anyway, i cleaned it all out with #91 rubbing alchohol, and put 3 stitches in it. (i never felt a thing, it was all numb and in shock) a few days later i pulled the stitches out, and called it good.(now that hurt)

well about a week later it started puffing up in this one spot, and looked like it had puss in it, so i lifted the edge of the scab and squeezed it. Out poped a little part of the fiberglass backing material from the cut off wheel. along with some other goo.

cleaned it up again with some #91, it healed up and now theres just a white line about an inch long up the pad of my thumb.

lessons learned:
1) mount your work in something more secure than your hand.
2) use both hands to operate the grinder
3) let a professional clean a wound that requires stitches.
4) make sure and hose off the driveway to remove the blood spatter before the wife gets home.

....

4) make sure and hose off the driveway to remove the blood spatter before the wife gets home.

For the younger ones substitute Mother; I learnt that lesson and remember it everytime I look at the scar on my right pinky finger. Fresh cut sheet metal is real sharp when your hand slips off the sheet metal shears.

Some years ago I worked in a large shop and some of the guys would forget and leave the chuck keys in the lathes. After about the 3rd one I saw flying across the shop I decided to try and reduce that problem.

All our lathes had a chuck hold on the front of the machine, basically just a couple of hooks that let the chuck lay flat against the machine front. I drilled a hole right where the chuck body would lay and installed a proximity switch, ran that to a relay I installed and ran the spindle contactor power wires through it. Chuck key not in place, then the spindle can't start. It won't prevent some idiot from bypassing it, but it eliminated the random "DUH" moments when somebody would forget the key.

Hey, the guy that taught me how to operate tooling shop equipment was 5 finger Joe; 2 on one hand and 3 on the other. You may think that's not the guy to learn from but every time he pointed to something and said "don't ever do this", it made you listen

Hey, the guy that taught me how to operate tooling shop equipment was 5 finger Joe; 2 on one hand and 3 on the other. You may think that's not the guy to learn from but every time he pointed to something and said "don't ever do this", it made you listen

LMAO, I would do the same too!!!

I find myself reflecting over how I myself handle tools when I read this.
I'm not as stupid as to have tried to clear of swarf with my hand I thought. But while I did some more thinking, I realised that I for a moment streached my hand towards the spindle, but immediately regretted it, and pulled it back a couple of weeks back on my mill. Just aluminium, but it could still have gone very wrong.

I to had a workrelated accident now over 10 years back. I was working in a ladder factory. I was working on a press, punching out holes in steel profiles when the boss said that I had to work faster. I had only been working there a month or so, and didn't feel confortable doing that. Almost all of the machines there were from around 1940 or so, with no working safetys on them, so I felt it best to keep it slow untill I got used to it. The boss did not like it, and changed me to another machine. This one was even older than the press, but did look less dangerous to me. It was a small riviting mashine, where you put the two pieces of metal in a fixture and pressed a pedal on the floor beneth the machine. No safety at all, and first time on the machine, I had to ajust the work stool in relation to the pedal to be able to reach better. You know what I'm saying right... Some how I slipped and managed to put the thumb in the riveter and press the foot pedal at the same time.
I can vividly remember how my thumb got squished, and blood gussing forth. There were still pieces of my thumb left on the machine when they helped me of it. Strangely enough, I don't have any trouble with my thumb today. It works 100%, but clicks strangely when you move it in a certain way. The nail is also a bit deformed.
I was 17 at the time, and I have had more respect for small machines ever since. To bad that it often takes an accident to build respect. But I guess better late then never. I know many times when you can tell someone that: "that's dangerous, you shouldn't do that!", and they will just ignore you and then get hurt.

(btw. sorry for any spelling mistakes or so...been a while since I wrote anything in English)

This thread makes great reading

I remember about a year and a half ago I pulled an all nighter to get a 'rush' job out for a customer. After 20 hours working solid my mind was clearly very tired and not on the job and I went to change the cutter on a big industrial cnc router. Problem was amongst the background noise the near silent spindle was still running a 1" profile cutter at 20,000rpm when for some inexplicable reason I stuck my hand in without checking.. It happened so quick I just stood back in horror, looked at all the blood and my mangled thumb and was sick.

Turns out rushing it actually delayed it for 2 weeks so now I know when to call it a day and go home.

Scariest thing I used to do at work was trepan the middle out of 10" stainless billets an inch thick on cnc lathes. You leave a tiny bit of material in the back so you can just tap it with a hammer and out pops the middle. sometimes the z wouldnt be set right and it would go right through and rattle the treppaned bit round the lathe enclosure like a bomb just went off, hated that job.

Had a scare today! A guy accidently turned the brand new romi lathe on with 6 foot piece of 1" 1/4 aluminum bar hanging out the back of the chuck at somewhere around 3000 rps or more was suppose to be 1200. Heard a loud whirling noise then lots of banging and then crash! Bar bent almost 90 degrees and smacked a 55 gallon drum putting a split in it. It destroyed the sheet metal on the rear of the lathe and scared the piss out of me.

my lip piercing has got a little bit of yellowy whitey stuff coming out of it....nothing major its just a little bit but it builds up over the day and on the inside of my mouth it looks like a bit of dead skin but i can clean it off and when i do it looks like puss.. and theres some white skin around the piercing on the front...is this normal?.. cheers

my lip piercing has got a little bit of yellowy whitey stuff coming out of it....nothing major its just a little bit but it builds up over the day and on the inside of my mouth it looks like a bit of dead skin but i can clean it off and when i do it looks like puss.. and theres some white skin around the piercing on the front...is this normal?.. cheers

Is it a recent piercing? Lip piercings usually only need about 2-4 weeks to heal up and stop pussing. If it gets infected initially, it might take longer than average to heal.

Keep it cleaned, wash it with bactine or something similar every few hours, and rinse with alcohol free listerine.

Don't clean it with alcohol, as this dries the skin out and slows healing.
Also, if you have a threaded bead on your lip stud/ring, be very careful with the bactine, as when it dries, it acts as a type of thread lock.

Definitely not normal...my lip came without any holes or bits of metal sticking through them. Perhaps you could return yours to the original manufacturer and ask them if this is a defect?

my lip piercing has got a little bit of yellowy whitey stuff coming out of it....nothing major its just a little bit but it builds up over the day and on the inside of my mouth it looks like a bit of dead skin but i can clean it off and when i do it looks like puss.. and theres some white skin around the piercing on the front...is this normal?.. cheers

I'm really appreciating all the great stories in this thread - they remind me to keep my eyes open and my head down. I'd like to add one of my own that happens to be vehicular, rather than equipment related. It's a bit of an oddball story, and requires some explaining...

A few years ago I got really interested in offroad driving and wrenching on 4x4's, but I wasn't exactly "in the money". As a result, me and my friends were always driving around beaters in extremely poor mechanical condition. My roommate at the time had a Dodge 1 ton with no parking brake, and poor enough compression in the old 360 that if left in gear it would slowly work it's way down the driveway to the street. His solution was to chock the wheels, and it was simple matter to do so after backing in. When leaving, however, he didn't like the idea of backing off the chock, turning off the ignition to keep the truck from rolling forward, removing the chock and then restarting the truck. Instead, he would put the truck in low and start it backing up slowly so that he would have time to grab the chock and hop back in the cab before the unmanned pickup ran into the side of the house! It worked pretty well. :rolleyes:

One time we were sharing a ride somewhere and decided to take his truck (probably because mine was stuck somewhere, or broken, or both). After climbing in the truck I realized that I could be of assistance by grabbing the chock as he backed up so that he wouldn't have to climb in and out. Apparently he didn't realize what I had planned, so as I was walking around behind the pickup, he started it in reverse as usual, and got out of the cab.

At this point you can probably see what's coming :D Flick sandwich - pinned up against the house. The rear tires were screeching, alternately losing traction, causing the truck to buck and jump. My friend was so stunned to see me behind the truck when he got out of the cab that he froze for a moment. I was almost panicked, couldn't free myself, didn't know what to do. I screamed "get it off me!". It snapped him out of it, and he jumped back in the truck to put it in neutral.

I was pretty lucky - he thought the tailgate was down, and had caught me on the lower torso. Would have killed me for sure. As it happens, the tailgate was up. Big flat bumper had me by the thigh. No permanent injury. Didn't even break a bone. Had a purple and green bruise all the way from my hip to my ankle for about 2 months though. I still won't walk between a running vehicle and any other obstacle. In fact I don't do nearly as much sketchy crap as I used to.

my lip piercing has got a little bit of yellowy whitey stuff coming out of it....nothing major its just a little bit but it builds up over the day and on the inside of my mouth it looks like a bit of dead skin but i can clean it off and when i do it looks like puss.. and theres some white skin around the piercing on the front...is this normal?.. cheers

No that's not normal, but I guess that's what you get for abusing your body, oh well you can just buy a new one.

I would say a cut off well in the most dangerous, and lest respected.