Dont lose your focus

[sn0border88]

Its always good to be reminded that just about any of the tools/machines a metal fabricator works with has the capacity to burn, fry, crush, sever, smash, decapitate, impale and otherwise harm the operator.

Dont get careless, no matter how many times you've done it you never know what can happen. Ive had a string of bad luck this past week and its made me go about things like im new at all this again.




Caution!

This link contains very gruesome and graphic images of what can happen, do not open it at work or any other place that would not want you viewing such images. You have been warned.

http://www.b0g.org/wsnm/articles/This+Is+Twisted

If its to much, remove it. But sometimes people need to get scared/shocked into safety.

[runchman]

Holy crap that's nasty.

Might want to warn people that it's a photo of a guy killed by getting wrapped around a large lathe.

yikes.

- John

[sn0border88]

yup, I didnt warn people at all.

:rolleyes:

[runchman]

Guess I just didn't expect it to be that nasty, wasn't trying to be a d*ck or anything.

I wonder what piece of clothing the guy had on that got caught up in the machine. What a way to go.

[zapster]

Remember one more thing..
The machine will never say "I'm Sorry" either..:nono:

...zap!

[MoonRise]

The tool don't care.

It will do whatever it was supposed to do (and sometimes things it's NOT supposed to do!) without thought or care or anything else. It will just DO.

Like the OP mentioned, it will cut, slice, crush, smash, fold, burn, shred, mutilate, or whatever. If you get in the way, the machine doesn't care and will still cut, slice, crush, smash, fold, burn, shred, mutilate, or whatever.

And we often forget or don't realize just how much POWER there is in the power tools we use. Even a 'lowly' hand drill with a 4 amp motor has enough power to almost instantly twist something (the drill or the workpiece, if they are not securely clamped) with 100+ pounds of force (4 amps x 120v = ~ 1/2 hp, which is approx 1/2 of 550 ft-lb/sec, or 275 pounds of force on a 12 inch handle/workpiece in a second). What's 100 pounds? Sure, you can maybe pick up or lift 100 pounds; but you can't hold onto that -snap- of instant torque in the blink of an eye.

The tools doesn't care.

Think. And be safe!

[Sober_Pollock]

You know.....

I just yelled at a guy today (Three times!) for wearing gloves while operating a small lathe!

[zapster]

You know.....

I just yelled at a guy today (Three times!) for wearing gloves while operating a small lathe!

Gloves and machinery is a major NO NO!!:nono::nono:
Long hair and machinery is a major NO NO!! :nono::nono:

Been thru the hair part with an ex friend..:mad:

Snap Crackle Pop is all you will hear if you survive..

I got caught in the lathe I run back in the mid 80'S

Scars to prove it:waving:

...zap!

[mtncrawler]

Wow, didn't expect that. Very sad.

Yes, what zap said. I've had close calls (only a couple mind you, but it only takes one) before and it's always brought me back to earth.

Scary stuff. Pay attention to your surroundings, don't rush, be careful, use your head, and watch for others. Like driving a car - it doesn't much for very bad things to happen if you're not "in the game".

[slowflyer]

You know.....

I just yelled at a guy today (Three times!) for wearing gloves while operating a small lathe!

You did not fire him the third time? I would have (probably the second)

[Sober_Pollock]

You did not fire him the third time? I would have (probably the second)

I don't have that kind of power (or any power at all actually), I'm not a boss.
I was just trying to look out for a coworker. Since I'm not a boss he didn't think he needed to take me seriously.

Rest assured though that in the end I won. I used an "Alternative" method of persuasion.

[stickkid]

Thats a good reminder to be very careful, and learn from others mistakes.
However the comments below the pictures were without tact and disgusting. Those people certainly wouldn't be making any jokes if they got sucked in there.

[TEK]

However the comments below the pictures were without tact and disgusting. Those people certainly wouldn't be making any jokes if they got sucked in there.

'Course not, they would be just as dead as he is.

And dont kid yourself about the comments; morbid humor is just some peoples way of escapism. You know..."If you die first, we're splittin up your gear" kinda thing. Just a way of pretending that it cant happen to you.

[Newfie_1986]

Well thoses photos are nasy but quite an eye opener ! I had a minor incident a while back. I was stick welding on a trailer. Didnt notice I had my foot under what I was welding. Next thing I know I have a hot gob of molten metal in my shoe (yeah I had shoes on very dumb). It wasnt just dumb wearing shoes but I should not have had my foot under there in the first place.

It took quite a while for my foot to heal, never could find a burn hole in the shoe just in my sock and my foot. I now have a couple of scars on my toes (that still hurt) to remind me not to be an idiot again !

[Mandau]

safety first and day one maintaince on the toys...

[zezerbing]

i work at a place where the boss is always "Hurry up", or "it's a five minute job" etc.. we have to slow down for our own sake.

[mla2ofus]

As a foreman on the gravel refineries I always took the newbie who'd never been around one and let him watch a self cleaning tail pulley on a conveyor eat up a chunk if 1x6 pine and spit out toothpicks in a few seconds. I'd tell them " I hope that raises your respect for everything around here, because none of this will respect you!!!".
Mike

[evancolq]

I always take my time with these tools.. it's for our own safety. Just wanted to say that was a pretty nasty link provided by the OP..Lol

[JimDon]

To the poster noting Boss' pushing for people to go faster:
One need not look any further than the disaster going on right now in the gulf. While the focus is on the spilled oil, the ultimate disaster is the loss of the 11 men who were blown up and off the rig when it exploded. According to the latest info, some boss was pushing for them to drill faster -- there was a bonus in it if they completed the well quicker than what was expected. Also, there was another boss who ignored the fact that the rubber from the blowout preventer was coming up in the drilling fluid. Someone had accidently bumped a joy stick on the rig and moved the drill up or down while the blowout preventer was locked down -- thereby destroying it. So those cautions about think, watch, be careful, etc. are so so timely and need to be heeded by all.
Stay safe out there,
Cheers,
Jim Don

[Oldiron2]

I remember hearing a story that was just as gruesome, but had little to photograph:
A fellow who worked in a plating company had been warned not to climb the ladder and reach out over the plating tank as he had; I don't recall all the details, but do remember that he turned up missing and an investigation later showed he had fallen into the tank, which had a strong acid solution.

I would like to suggest that the most common machine used by nearly everyone is the Automobile. I regularly see idiots following another car at 65 or 70 mph while keeping a distance of only one or two car lengths, making sudden lane changes. etc.; I could site other examples of misuse, but we all see them and know the occasional results.

[jreynoldswelding]

I remember hearing a story that was just as gruesome, but had little to photograph:
A fellow who worked in a plating company had been warned not to climb the ladder and reach out over the plating tank as he had; I don't recall all the details, but do remember that he turned up missing and an investigation later showed he had fallen into the tank, which had a strong acid solution.

I would like to suggest that the most common machine used by nearly everyone is the Automobile. I regularly see idiots following another car at 65 or 70 mph while keeping a distance of only one or two car lengths, making sudden lane changes. etc.; I could site other examples of misuse, but we all see them and know the occasional results.

Great point!

[mla2ofus]

Speaking of automobiles, the thing that really winds my spring up tight is people talking/ texting on the cell phone while driving. Almost every time I see someone do something stupid while driving the cell phone is in one hand!!!
Mike

[bert the welder]

I don't have that kind of power (or any power at all actually), I'm not a boss.
I was just trying to look out for a coworker. Since I'm not a boss he didn't think he needed to take me seriously.

Rest assured though that in the end I won. I used an "Alternative" method of persuasion.

Print out the photos and tape them to his station. See if he gets the hint. Maybe show the boss too. Maybe he'll get it as well.

They banned driving while on cell phone or using electronic devices. Idiots still do it. Really pisses me off.

Too bad if the guy in the pic was a stand up joe. If he was one of " those guys", fook'm, one less dick wasting oxygen. I've been around too many macho a-holes to care.

[Crawford]

Print out the photos and tape them to his station. See if he gets the hint. Maybe show the boss too. Maybe he'll get it as well.

They banned driving while on cell phone or using electronic devices. Idiots still do it. Really pisses me off.

Too bad if the guy in the pic was a stand up joe. If he was one of " those guys", fook'm, one less dick wasting oxygen. I've been around too many macho a-holes to care.

drivin down the highway in my truck today almost ended up like the dude on the lathe cause the ^&*(% driving the garbage truck that services my house was on his cellphone and swerved 1/2 way into my lane.. called his manager then the highway patrol, hoping that lazy ^&*( gets fired...

[William McCormick Jr]

Yea those lathes will take large bar and twist it. It was probably over quick though.

I was setting one up in a shop I worked in and their was a problem with the transmission, it is scary because, I did not know if it was engaged or just having a moment. I had my hands on the chuck, seeing if there was power going to it. But your not focusing enough on what if this thing suddenly engages. Now I know. Ha-ha.

If those jaws of the chuck are sticking out past the chucks diameter it is like getting hit with a 2"x3" solid steel bar.


Sincerely,


William McCormick

[GomezAddams]

I honestly think gruesome industrial safety films and stories may have saved my life and/or limbs/digits a few times.

Do trade schools simply not teach safety the way they used to?

I never went to trade school per se, but my high school was in a town that was supported by agriculture and industry, so most high schools had REALLY GOOD classes and facilities for "blue collar" careers. Our machine shop teacher

I skipped wood shop, because the machines there were actually scarier than in the metal shop - sharper blades, MUCH higher surface speeds. To this day I have a deep respect for joiner-planers. But I digress.

Our teacher was a retired tool and die maker, and naturally he had a gruesome story for every single tool in the shop. Some of them make me cringe even now to remember, and I've seen a few nasty things up close and personal since those days. (70s)

Mr. Lurie showed us a number of safety films, some of them containing seriously unpleasant real imagery.

They did the same in Driver's Ed.

But today, it's more important that we not upset our children, or give them anything to worry about, than to keep them alive and/or unblinded.

But I suppose as others have pointed out, it's a self-correcting problem.

If you saw a man drowning in a lake of boiling urine would you dive in to save him?

Of course not. That's Darwinism. ;D

[GomezAddams]

PS: I have quite a few safety anecdotes and near-misses of my own too. All my life I've been mucking about with various things that store lots of energy - pyrotechnics, high voltage, pulsed power systems, scary springs, heavy weights, and so on and so forth.

One upon a time, I had a magnetic can crusher I had thrown together. This thing involves charging up some big high voltage capacitors, and then discharging them through a coil of heavy wire with a pop can inside it. The pop can acts as a shorted turn of a transformer, the working coil being the other winding. The effects are dramatic and loud. The charged cap bank is HIDEOUSLY dangerous - that one stored 5kJ, all of which can be released in a very small fraction of a second. A millisecond is not unusual or difficult. A Joule is 1 Watt-second, so if you dump all 5kJ in 1/1000 of a second, you're talking about a theoretical peak power of 5 MW!

If you're lucky, it will only blow a finger off from the steam explosion inside your tissue.

http://www.speakeasy.org/~gomez/owlhouse/images/madsci/cancrusher5.jpg

So one day at a party at our house, fairly lit after a half-dozen beers, I was demonstrating this rig, and I um, "lost my focus". I had just done a shot - I had already done several, and I was about to reset everything when a friend pointed out that I had skipped a step - I hadn't discharged the caps. See, after a shot, a phenomenon called "dielectric absorption" leaves quite a bit of charge left in the caps, even though you may have just finished short-circuiting them. I KNEW this, and that's why I had been shorting the caps with an insulated "chicken stick" and then jumpering the cap bank while I set up the next shot.

I'm told all of the color drained from my face when he stopped me and pointed out what I'd been about to do: touch the caps, charged with Ghu-knows how many kilojoules of energy at some tens of kV...

Odds are, I would not be writing this if he had not caught me. At that point, I safed everything, unplugged the supply, walked away shaking, and sat down with a stiffer drink.

Drinking and playing with high voltage gear having almost no source current limit (for short periods anyway)? GREAT IDEA! :-(

I've been lucky many times over. But those experiences have scared me enough that I just keep getting more and more careful as I get older. The stuff I fool around with now - you don't often get second chances.

[9erhater]

well thats a real shame, man hardly ever wins against machine, in these situations. everytime I have had a near miss, it was near the end of my shift, you know the "let me get this last thing done before I go home" little do you know that at that point you are not really focused on the work , or you tend to rush to get it done. hence making that one mistake that you would never make under normal work conditions. one thing I do now is ,if you catch yourself making those little mistakes that you dont normally do. stop what your doing, step back and look at what you are doing. and mentally walk yourself through it from the begining to the end. its that little break that gets you back on track and focused. its like when you are trying to thread a bolt in a hole, and you just cant catch a thread to save your life and you get so frustrated and it just gets worse, your buddy walks by sees you mad grabs the bolt and twists the bolt in the first try. that how stupid you feel moment, those dont happen that often as you get older and more patient. take that break and get focused on what you are doing. you dont end up a statistic or give up one of those body parts that make you that living.

[Oldiron2]

PS: I have quite a few safety anecdotes and near-misses of my own too. All my life I've been mucking about with various things that store lots of energy - pyrotechnics, high voltage, pulsed power systems, scary springs, heavy weights, and so on and so forth.

One upon a time, I had a magnetic can crusher I had thrown together. This thing involves charging up some big high voltage capacitors, and then discharging them through a coil of heavy wire with a pop can inside it. The pop can acts as a shorted turn of a transformer, the working coil being the other winding. The effects are dramatic and loud. The charged cap bank is HIDEOUSLY dangerous - that one stored 5kJ, all of which can be released in a very small fraction of a second. A millisecond is not unusual or difficult. A Joule is 1 Watt-second, so if you dump all 5kJ in 1/1000 of a second, you're talking about a theoretical peak power of 5 MW!

If you're lucky, it will only blow a finger off from the steam explosion inside your tissue.

http://www.speakeasy.org/~gomez/owlhouse/images/madsci/cancrusher5.jpg

So one day at a party at our house, fairly lit after a half-dozen beers, I was demonstrating this rig, and I um, "lost my focus". I had just done a shot - I had already done several, and I was about to reset everything when a friend pointed out that I had skipped a step - I hadn't discharged the caps. See, after a shot, a phenomenon called "dielectric absorption" leaves quite a bit of charge left in the caps, even though you may have just finished short-circuiting them. I KNEW this, and that's why I had been shorting the caps with an insulated "chicken stick" and then jumpering the cap bank while I set up the next shot.

I'm told all of the color drained from my face when he stopped me and pointed out what I'd been about to do: touch the caps, charged with Ghu-knows how many kilojoules of energy at some tens of kV...

Odds are, I would not be writing this if he had not caught me. At that point, I safed everything, unplugged the supply, walked away shaking, and sat down with a stiffer drink.

Drinking and playing with high voltage gear having almost no source current limit (for short periods anyway)? GREAT IDEA! :-(

I've been lucky many times over. But those experiences have scared me enough that I just keep getting more and more careful as I get older. The stuff I fool around with now - you don't often get second chances.

I have a friend, a circuit designer, who has built such a can crusher. A few years ago I happened upon a huge capacitor bank behind a closing company and almost got it and some other related stuff -- [long, censored story] --- but look what was on CL today, which my friend would love to have gotten if only for the transformer. Lots of good, free stuff out there to kill yourself with, if not careful, knowledgeable, and maybe lucky too?.


Free X-Ray Machine (danville / san ramon)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2010-06-30, 7:09PM PDT
Reply to: sale-dbdsn-1820054300@craigslist.org

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Free 300-100 Fisher X-Ray Machine & Transformer, 1975 model. (925) 718-xxxx

[frieed]

The DMV in Sheridan Wyoming used to have a wall of photographs titled "Patrolman's Nightmare". They were all shots of traffic fatalities and were required viewing for every kid that wanted to get a license.

[William McCormick Jr]

I honestly think gruesome industrial safety films and stories may have saved my life and/or limbs/digits a few times.

Do trade schools simply not teach safety the way they used to?

I never went to trade school per se, but my high school was in a town that was supported by agriculture and industry, so most high schools had REALLY GOOD classes and facilities for "blue collar" careers. Our machine shop teacher

I skipped wood shop, because the machines there were actually scarier than in the metal shop - sharper blades, MUCH higher surface speeds. To this day I have a deep respect for joiner-planers. But I digress.

Our teacher was a retired tool and die maker, and naturally he had a gruesome story for every single tool in the shop. Some of them make me cringe even now to remember, and I've seen a few nasty things up close and personal since those days. (70s)

Mr. Lurie showed us a number of safety films, some of them containing seriously unpleasant real imagery.

They did the same in Driver's Ed.

But today, it's more important that we not upset our children, or give them anything to worry about, than to keep them alive and/or unblinded.

But I suppose as others have pointed out, it's a self-correcting problem.

If you saw a man drowning in a lake of boiling urine would you dive in to save him?

Of course not. That's Darwinism. ;D


You are absolutely right.

Yesterday 4th of July, I was setting off a few oxygen and acetylene bags. The neighbors thought they were pretty cool. Some thought the small size of the bag, under one cubic foot was just unbelievable.

Well when my father saw the young guys so interested he started talking about what happened in Grumman years ago. When ever you needed something in Grumman it was customary to just grab it. And then the next day the fellow you took it from would bitch and moan and go to the tool crib and get another.
But the guys that did the oxygen and acetylene welding, used to lock their torches in the draw, evidently to many people wanted a torch. Ha-ha.

Well one day this guy puts his torch in the draw, through the cutout to lock it in there, he comes back a while later. When he opened the draw, the steel tools inside made some friction a spark, and blew the draw apart, the guy had to go to the hospital. There must have been a leak in the torch.
They said there was nothing left of the draw. But you would not get to hear these things without some excitement or interest in the subject. A lot of times someone will lay the torch down, it is out but still running gas, to move something hot off a hose, or to put out a fire. You can easily hurl things across a room at lethal speeds with oxygen and acetylene.

I totally got my respect for oxygen and acetylene from seeing it go off in a waste paper can sized plastic bag, when filled with a perfect mix of oxygen and acetylene. And watching it hurl things at amazing speeds and force.

Years ago I used to be an Emergency response HAZMAT professional. And since we were New York HAZMAT we had to be the best. Because we see it all in very tight places, with a very large mix of chemicals.

My company hired the best National HAZMAT trainer in the United States. He came and what happened had to be the one of the most amazing things.

Our group did not want to be beaten by this guy and this guy certainly did not want to be beaten by us. But both of us were almost crying in laughter, as each side brought out really wild almost unheard of real life accidents.

A couple times he was very serious and when he asked us to guess what chemical something was treated with that could cause it to burst into flames with explosive force. We came up with so many different chemicals, some of them you never even hear of, he put his head down laughing. And said we were very good.

But when he told us what chemical he used we were surprised. It was Chlorox bleach. And it turned a towel that was still died orange, into an explosive. Pretty wild what can happen under the right situations. He had seen just about every disaster that no one could figure out.

One of his men blew through a cinder block wall, when he was exposed to a silent explosion during the making of a HAZMAT training film, cleaning up an ammonia spill. So it definitely helps to discuss reality. Because it may not seem like realty to some.

I know some welders would crap their pants if they stood near a bag of perfectly mixed oxygen and acetylene.







Sincerely,


William McCormick

[joedirt1966]

Real life proves the old saying to be true......It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye (or worse).

[Ed.]

Just goes to show that lathes really don't give you a second chance, they are one of the most dangerous pieces of machinery around in a workshop. I recently bought a lathe, it's a bit smaller than the one shown but it's still big, and every time I use it, I am always thinking about what would happen if it the chuck or the spinning work would grab my sleeve or something, and the mental images I think about are pretty much what those pictures show.

When you think about it, with the weight of the work piece, a 30kg chuck, about 40 kg of gears and about 30kg of motor armature all spinning at up to about 1600 RPM, the momentum of all that weight and speed isn't going to stop the chuck spinning in a split second.

Even if I managed somehow to hit the emergency stop or disengaged the chuck, the brakes on mine would still allow the chuck to continue to revolve about 20-30 revolutions before stopping. So I figure, parts of me would have gone through that many times that I would still be a dead man, so I try and not have loose clothing or sleeves when machining, also I never put my arms over the working bits if they are moving, not worth the risk.

What really annoys me are the asinine comments that people posted on the bottom of those pictures in that forums. No respect whatsoever, that accident could happen to anyone, including them, for all we know he may have had a heart attack or stoke or something, or even a momentary lack of judgment or attention, you don't get a second chance.

Although the images are gruesome and what I expected, they will serve as a reminder and help to keep me focused when operating the lathe and not get complacent. My sympathies to his family.

[bert the welder]

Tools like this could benefit from something like the Saw Stop brake system. Maybe a foot pedal pressure switch release. Saw the guy who designed the system on TV. He actually put his own finger in the blade to prove it works. No hot dog. That 's putting your money where your mouth is.:eek:

[William McCormick Jr]

Just goes to show that lathes really don't give you a second chance, they are one of the most dangerous pieces of machinery around in a workshop. I recently bought a lathe, it's a bit smaller than the one shown but it's still big, and every time I use it, I am always thinking about what would happen if it the chuck or the spinning work would grab my sleeve or something, and the mental images I think about are pretty much what those pictures show.

When you think about it, with the weight of the work piece, a 30kg chuck, about 40 kg of gears and about 30kg of motor armature all spinning at up to about 1600 RPM, the momentum of all that weight and speed isn't going to stop the chuck spinning in a split second.

Even if I managed somehow to hit the emergency stop or disengaged the chuck, the brakes on mine would still allow the chuck to continue to revolve about 20-30 revolutions before stopping. So I figure, parts of me would have gone through that many times that I would still be a dead man, so I try and not have loose clothing or sleeves when machining, also I never put my arms over the working bits if they are moving, not worth the risk.

What really annoys me are the asinine comments that people posted on the bottom of those pictures in that forums. No respect whatsoever, that accident could happen to anyone, including them, for all we know he may have had a heart attack or stoke or something, or even a momentary lack of judgment or attention, you don't get a second chance.

Although the images are gruesome and what I expected, they will serve as a reminder and help to keep me focused when operating the lathe and not get complacent. My sympathies to his family.

Oil hardening strands of wire hardened while cutting, will if I lose a finger, be the cause of my injury on a lathe. One day I went to break one off, that was getting way to long and out of control. And when I could not break it by hand, I really got scared, because I did not know what I was doing. Normally I could break the same size piece easily if it was, any other material even stainless steel.

I have actual respect now when oil hardening curls, start coming off the work. But I noticed a few types of aluminum can also hurt you badly, I was surprised by a few types of aluminum.

Sincerely,


William McCormick