Ok I thought it appropriate to share these in the silencersmithing forum as most people who go here work around lathes and other rotating equipment. I don't know any back story for these pictures, we just received them in a email from another machine shop near LA, and they had got them from a safety presentation about safety near rotating equipment. All I can say is ouch.... makes you aware of what kind of energy machining equipment has.

Looks like his clothing got caught, maybe it's what caused it?

I just called my shop guys into the office to have a little safety meeting and showed them this.

Wow.

I've seen similar photos, but never this graphic!

Back in the day when I was a tool maker, we had very strict rules, no loose long hair, no loose shirts, and no jewelry.

The shop I worked at had an employee with ( Greg Allman Brothers ) long hair and was scalped.

Another guy, I had to help to medical, had gotten his finger caught in wheel grinder and it pulled the skin off like nothing to it.

Safety is a mindset. A fraction of a second is all it takes.

My condolences to his family and friends.

You really need to keep your head when working around equipment like this.

Damn I've seen fingers and other stuff but man ..... Let's be careful.

I am going to print that out and post it above the shop lathe at work.

I've seen those before , had a guy add them to a powerpoint for a "safey minute" at work.

the thing is that a lathe half that size will do the same thing so don't let the size of the machine fool you , a gear reduced 1760rpm motor at 1/2 hp will rip you hand off no problem , that big lathe probably uses a 15 hp or so motor and likely never even gave a grunt as it realed him in

all shirt tucked in tight and if the sleeves have to be long then they are kept tight also , any long hair pulled back and tucked into the shirt or worn up (alot of women machinest)

in cases like this by the time the poor guy relized what happened and gave the "oh s--t" it was to late , most new machines have an Emergancy stop/brake that is a big foot pedal

A machine like that really needs a "deadman" switch to reduce the likely hood that the operator becomes a dead man.

When the switch is released, a brake needs to engage pronto.

Wow, I had a colleague rip a finger off on one of our lathes about 14 years back but this is something else.

A few years back, at the company that I work for we had a "near miss" accident. A co- worker of mine got thrown completely over the top of the lathe he was operating, landing on the floor on the back side of the machine.after his unscheduled ride all he had left on was his shoes and socks. the rest of his clothes were wrapped up on his work-piece. fortunately for him he suffered no injuries other than a few scratches and bruises. the machine he was running was going in reverse at the time of the accident, and was about 4 or 5 times the size of the lathe shown in this incident. watch out folks, death is only a fraction of a second away in any machine shop, these machines are designed to cut metal, cutting meat is no problem for them.

Fudmottin wrote:A machine like that really needs a "deadman" switch to reduce the likely hood that the operator becomes a dead man.

When the switch is released, a brake needs to engage pronto.

No, that's stupid.

Post these pictures on a bulletin board instead.

But seriously, how the F--k long did that take to kill him, 15 seconds? Good thing he didn't have a way of shutting it down fast.

These have been posted on Practical Machinist before (and I reposted yesterday). The guys there think it happened in a second or two.

Comments by one of the members there:

HelicalCut:
500ft/min to reel in 2 ft of clothing, about 0.25 seconds then to be climb milled by a 16" 3 jaw with a surface speed of 2000 ft /min. Scary messy but probably quick, not much opportunity for a second chance with this equipment.

It looks like a 70's lathe so it probably had a foot brake, see my calculation above, the work on that machine was effectively a 4" winch drum mounted between centres, if it was mild steel then it probably had around 500 ft min surface speed, that is what I usually turn mild steel at. Once that winch grabs something it gets reeled in quickly 2 feet in a quarter of a second, not a lot of time to press a foot brake and bring a 16" chuck to a halt when a winch is pulling you off it.

That is the sobering reality of why we have to be careful when working around powerful machines. Loose clothing and gloves are a definite no-no.

wow. just wow.

NSFW? DAMN! More like NSWE (Not Safe While Eating).

I don't work with metal yet, but I'll keep this in mind and be a little more careful around my woodworking equipment.

That's just plain awful, I feel for his family...

I remember an incident with a lathe similar to the one we have here on campus at a different university in TN. Someone left a chuck handle in a 15k rpm lathe far back on the chuck...turned the lathe on and the chuck handle went flying and hit an engineering student in the head, he now has a second grade mentality and his wife and kids have to take care of him.

ETA: That lathe looks similar t ours and probably has the same "dead man" switch ours has. Ours has a large red button as well as a bar that runs the entire length of the working area that just depressing with your foot will stop it almost immediately. This likely happened far too fast for that to help...

I doubt that it took as long as two seconds to real him in. With a dead man switch and brake, no reaction time would be required. Once the machine started to grab, the switch would be released and the machine slammed to a halt.

At least that's the way to design it.

I suppose some sort of lock would be useful if the machine could work unattended.

A safety shield would be nice too.

I keep wondering why a chuck that size is only a three jaw instead of a six.

Fudmottin wrote:I doubt that it took as long as two seconds to real him in. With a dead man switch and brake, no reaction time would be required. Once the machine started to grab, the switch would be released and the machine slammed to a halt.

At least that's the way to design it.

Most machines you need to be able to work with both hands at the same time, kind of like the pat your head and rub your stomach so a dead man switch is counter productive, besides I was at a stamp and die shop once and this huge 200 ton press had dead man switches arm lengths apart, both had to be pressed to activate the press and if one was released the press would raise, well the operator by some form of magic still managed to press off a hand even though both hands were required to press buttons to operate it. If lathes had dead man switches someone would tape the down or by pass them, not to mentions you usually can't stand in one spot at all times to hold a button down to make a machine run.

I suppose some sort of lock would be useful if the machine could work unattended.

Very few manual machines will work unattended, especially older machines, you have to engage and disengage feeds, I mean some machines have stops to set where a feed starts and stops but a manual machine is very much that.... very manual and hands on

A safety shield would be nice too.

Most manual machines you need see what is happening in every aspect of the part and tool so guards become cumbersome and in most cases make it more dangerous in my experiences, my small tooling lathe has a guard mounted on the tool post and more than once have I ran into it or something gets caught (mostly by stringers) and pulls the guard into the part.... I took it off after a large stringer grabbed it a pulled it into the chuck

I keep wondering why a chuck that size is only a three jaw instead of a six.

My work has a 34 inch double chucking machine (two chucks, one on either side of the spindle and it has a 3 jaw on both sides) and we have a couple 9 feet vertical turret lathes (the chuck is 9 feet diameter) and they run a 3 jaw, its just application specific


In the end it is situational awareness and not be complaisant that will save you, you can engineer and regulate all you want but mature, responsible, educated employees are the only ones that will stop stuff like this from happening. [/b]

edit: I don't know how to make the format correct but the parts in bold are my response

" Safety First "

I was thinking along the lines of a switch that you kept pressed in with the knee or a foot peddle. But I guess that wouldn't work too well either.

I'm not sure what sucked that guy in. I can't imagine someone stupid enough to wear a tie. Looks like he had a loose fit sweater on.

I found out some more info: the guy was wearing multiple layers of clothing, semi loose clothing at that, anyway it caught his right arm in the part and pulled him face first into the chuck and tool post, basically wedging his right shoulder between to cross slide/ tool post and the chuck. The people said the machine got shut down within 10 seconds of the guy getting his clothing caught but it was way too late. The guy had been a machinist for 12 plus years and had never had any previous lost time accidents, in the end the investigation found out that the man was probably complacent, and felt over confident in his job, and allowed himself to get to close to the spinning part. Complacently kills, it has been said a million times in military operations and is very true in many civilian applications.

Loose clothing RIP brother.