Machinery Guards and OSHA Requirements


Moving machine parts possess the potential to cause serious workplace injuries, which include crushed fingers or hands, amputations, burns, or blindness. Amputations, lacerations, and abrasions are costly and possess the possible to raise workers' compensation premiums. As a consequence 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 inside the work area from hazards created during the machine's normal operation. This would include hazards of concern such as: ingoing nip points, rotating components, reciprocating, transversing, and/or flying chips & sparks.

Any machine part, function, or process that might lead to 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. That point where work is performed on the material, for example cutting, shaping, boring, or forming of stock. All components with the mechanical system that transmit energy to the part from the machine performing the work. These components include flywheels, pulleys, belts, connecting rods, couplings, cams, spindles, chains, cranks, and gears.

All parts on 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 from the machine.


Simple 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 in the hazardous machine areas.

Location
To consider a part of a machine to be safeguarded by location, the dangerous moving part of a machine must be positioned so that those areas are not accessible or do not present a hazard to a worker during the normal operation from the machine. A thorough hazard analysis of each machine and particular situation is absolutely essential before attempting this safeguarding technique.

Awareness Barriers (Warnings)
Awareness barriers do not give complete protection from machinery guards hazards, they may provide the operator with an extra margin of safety. An awareness barrier does not provide physical protection, but serves only to remind a person that he or she is approaching the danger area. Generally, awareness barriers are not considered adequate when continual exposure to the hazard exists.

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