Lathe Safety

[TomG]

Time for a reality check gentlemen.

I've been meaning to add a video to the safety section of my YouTube channel on the dangers of rotating machinery when I ran across this video on another forum. In my opinion, it's the best example of this type of hazard that I've seen. Why?

1) The victim survives the accident, instead of being turned into a pile of goo like so many industrial accident pics that you see. This makes it more believable, as in maybe this really could happen to me.

2) It demonstrates how violating a simple safety rule like wearing long sleeves, wrapping emery cloth around a shaft and holding it in one hand, or reaching over the shaft can get you into a world of trouble (this guy broke all three).

3) It demonstrates how quickly accidents on rotating machinery can happen and how helpless the victim becomes. How many of us, me included work alone?

So watch this, because any one of us could find ourselves in this situation in a heartbeat. It's disturbing, but not bloody and as I said, the guy did survive relatively unscathed. He was very lucky.

Tom