OSHA stuffs.Follow

Remember a few months ago when I mentioned an operator at our plant lost his hand and a portion of his arm?

OSHA finally finished everything and it only came out to a total fine of around 750 USD.

Suprisingly very little, at least compared to what I expected.

I think they cited stuff like our company never having any serious injuries in the past, and our existing safety programs, as reasons for the reduced fine.


On a related note, I have modified the offending machine so that the accident can never happen again. I just wish the danger had been noticed before the operator was injured. The man will never be the same again. A few local companies have pooled together to donate money (to the man and his family, not our company, of course).

Edited, Oct 25th 2008 10:18pm by TirithRR

There was a hydraulic cylinder with a hook that grabbed a large chunk of steel and pulled it into position. Something wasn't right with the piece (wasn't sitting right, who knows) and the operator reached into the machine to try and correct it.

He did not hit the stop button before he reached in, and his arm was caught between the steel piece and the steel frame. It was crushed/cut off.

The operator was careless, but the laws say the operator shouldn't have been allowed to place himself into any danger. The machine should have been properly guarded. (And it is now, too late though...)

No, it involved a gate system and modifying the control circuit by adding Category 4 safety rated devices.

You should have had a trip guard in place.

But then you can't protect humans from their own stupidity all the time.

I've heard horror stories from overseas. We have some 5 and 6 axis machining centers from Germany, and one of the maintenance workers was from Bulgaria. I was working with him on a problem one of the machines was having.

We were talking and he told me that over in Germany, one of the technicians was inside the machining center with the safety door bypassed. The machine had an 8inch saw blade in it's tool holder, and he reached up to feel the bearings on the motor. An operator on the outside pressed the start button and the blade turns on while he had his hand on it and it cut almost all the way through his wrist.

Some of our guys went on a tour to a plant in China. There they had operators would would stand inside a hydraulic press. It would come down, press the parts, then as it went up the operators would physically move the parts over to the next station before it came down again. There were no safety devices in place, it just automatically cycled once the parts were moved. Seriously crazy...

I think one of our plant managers told us about a guy who decided to take his lunch break inside a very large press. He fell asleep and when the other operators came back they didn't know there was a man inside it and started it up. Needless to say he didn't survive.

Some people do some stupid sh*t.


Edit:
I can confidently say that if a person was ever crushed to death inside of any of our machines, I definitely would not be the one cleaning it...

Edited, Oct 26th 2008 4:59pm by TirithRR