Important Guidelines on Machinery Guards Operations and Processes


Moving machine parts possess the potential to bring about serious workplace injuries, for instance crushed fingers or hands, amputations, burns, or blindness. Amputations, lacerations, and abrasions are expensive and have the potential to enhance workers' compensation premiums. Amputation is one of the most severe and crippling varieties of injuries in the occupational workplace, usually resulting in permanent disability. As a result of this fact, OSHA (Occupational Security & Health Administration) has established a set of standards around machine guarding. The purpose of machinery guards is to protect the machine operator and other employees in the work area from hazards created during the machine's normal operation. This would include hazards of concern including: ingoing nip points, rotating parts, reciprocating, transversing, and/or flying chips & sparks.

Any machine part, function, or process that might trigger injury must be safeguarded. When the operation of a machine or accidental contact with it could injure the operator or others in the vicinity, the hazards must be either controlled or eliminated. Dangerous moving components require safeguarding because these three areas in the machine are most likely to lead to injuries:

The point of operation
That point where work is performed on the material, for instance cutting, shaping, boring, or forming of stock.

Power transmission apparatus
All components of the mechanical system that transmit energy to the part of the machine performing the work. These components include flywheels, pulleys, belts, connecting rods, couplings, cams, spindles, chains, cranks, and gears.

Other moving parts
All components of the machine that move while the machine is working. These may include reciprocating, rotating, and transverse moving parts, as well as feed mechanisms and auxiliary components on the machine.

Approaches to Machinery Guards:

Guards
Guards are physical barriers that enclose dangerous machine parts and prevent employee contact with them. They must be strong and fastened by any secure method that prevents the guard from being inadvertently dislodged or removed. This is the preferred method of protection.

Safe Guarding Devices
Safeguarding devices are controls or attachments that usually prevent inadvertent access by employees to hazardous machine areas, when properly designed and installed. Examples include: presence sensing, pullback, restraint, safety controls, and gates.

Secondary Safeguarding Methods
Detection safeguarding devices, awareness devices, safeguarding methods and safe work procedures are secondary safeguarding methods. These methods provide a lesser degree of protection than the primary safeguarding methods as they do not prevent employees from placing or having any part of their bodies within the hazardous machine areas. These methods are acceptable only when guards or safeguarding devices cannot be installed as a result of reasons of infeasibility. Secondary machinery guards must not be used in place of primary safeguarding methods.


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