For my fellow lathe owners

[floydjer]

No blood or gore....Advance this to  3:00 and watch   www.liveleak.com/view?i=dad_1384415354

[Vinsky]

This also happened at a shop next door to mine a few years ago.  Luckily?? it was his right hand and he stopped the lathe and reversed it. Still lost much use of his hand.

[Dean Los Angeles]

Anything that rotates is dangerous to loose clothing.

I watched a guy standing on top of a machine with no good place to stand. He had to drill a hole in a vent pipe, so he grabbed the vent pipe with one hand and drilled through from the other side. The drill went through the vent pipe and caught his shirt. Wrapped it up tight and pinned him to the vent. He wasn't hurt. There were three of us watching because this guy had a history, and we could see it coming. Our reaction was severely delayed because the side splitting laughter and tears had to be stopped first.

Leaving the chuck key in the chuck on a lathe or drill press is dangerous. Where I work we confiscated all of the conventional keys and replaced them with spring loaded keys  that can't be left in the chuck. They were attached to the machine with a cable. We wrote up several production people that didn't get the repeated messages and used the ones they had hidden in their tool box.

Using the dead center in the tail stock properly is also necessary. I knew a guy that was threading a 6" diameter piece of aluminum and forgot the tail stock. The piece was spit out and bounced off of the back wall then off his head. Several stitches were necessary. He drove himself to the hospital then went home and collapsed on the couch. Didn't bother to call his mom, who later walked in the door and fainted on the spot.

[Jessechop]

Notice his foot? Actually pulled him out of his shoe when he caught the floor

[Peter Jack]

That's exactly why I hate seeing people wearing gloves when thy work on rotating machinery including drill presses. Hands can be mangled rather quickly.

Pete

[Tman]

That's exactly why I hate seeing people wearing gloves when thy work on rotating machinery including drill presses. Hands can be mangled rather quickly.

Pete

I don't mind gloves around a drill press, hands should never be near the bit and chuck anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RichFox]

Where i worked we had monthly safety films. One month it was about finger safety. Fingers laying in chip trays. Fingers on mill tables and such. So after the movie asked Phil Wu, who was missing three fingers on one hand and two from the other, "having more experience that the rest of us, do you have anything to add?" Phil had learned his trade in China before coming here. Phil looked me in the eye and said "Any man who wok 10 year, and have ten finger, Fording off." I had no come back.

[manta22]

    

[jdincau]

     Two incidents from my tool and die apprenticeship at the old lazy L
First, a journeyman die maker is introducing me to a disk grinder, 36 ' dia. heavy duty monster. He turns it on, lets it get up to speed and throws a leather shop glove against the disc. Poof the glove turns to dust and leather shards. I listened to that guy.

Second, a setup man in the production machine shop is showing me how to adjust the depth of cut on what was called a high cycle mill. Think of a large vertical mill modified with a DC motor that spins a carbide tooth face mill at 2400 RPM, used for facing aluminum billets to size. He is doing this with the cutter running holding a 6" machinists scale with the three remaining fingers on his right hand. I did not listen to him.

    One thing I learned in my apprenticeship, everyone has something to teach you even if it is what not to do.
     

[wobblywalrus]

One thing that can happen to any of us is finding a machine unplugged, plugging it in, and it turns on.  The switch is in the "on" position when the machine is plugged in.

That lathe flick is scary.  Taking off my clothes before machining, that is what I need to do. 

[Stainless1]

ditto on not wearing gloves... was polishing on the lathe... wearing a glove because I'm not thinking...
good thing it was a Harbor Freight glove, lathe ripped it in two and off my hand... hand was a little sore but stayed attached to me  

I never wear gloves around the lathe or mill

[Milwaukee Midget]

Leaving the chuck key in the chuck on a lathe or drill press is dangerous. Where I work we confiscated all of the conventional keys and replaced them with spring loaded keys  that can't be left in the chuck. They were attached to the machine with a cable. We wrote up several production people that didn't get the repeated messages and used the ones they had hidden in their tool box.

I worked in a machine shop for a short period of time.  I once left a chuck in a Warner Swasey #5.  I was inexperienced, young, stupid and lucky, because I had also left the machine in reverse.

Sent the chuck through the side of the steel pole building, leaving a gaping hole in it.

I went outside and dug it out of the snow bank.

Had I been smarter, it would have been my left shoulder - but you can't count on stupidity to always bail you out.  A sheet of steel and a fistful of pop rivets fixed the building - I wouldn't have been that lucky if I hadn't been that unaware.

I'm still haunted by that one.

One of the most beautiful girls in my high school caught her hair in a small engine lathe in shop class.  Had it been a dozen hairs more, it would have drug her face right into the chuck.  As it happened, she wound up with a bad haircut for the rest of the semester.

One of my best friends in high school broke his leg in gym class.  He shared a hospital room with a farmer who got his new Key bib overalls caught in an unguarded power takeoff on a tractor.  There wasn't an extremity on that man that didn't have something broken.

I worked for a short period of time at a rubber molding company in Waukesha.  Part of the process was feeding rubber into a heated roller.  A co-worker got his hand stuck, and despite the deadman switch, the roller had to be removed to extricate his hand from the machine.  

When I saw this post, and then clicked on the link and saw a lathe operator, my stomach turned.  I stopped the video and rechecked the initial posting - "no blood or gore".  Had I not re-read that, I would have skipped the rest of the video entirely.

I've seen enough of it, but it's good to be reminded that I've seen enough of it.


 

[Milwaukee Midget]

Did I mention that I apprenticed as a meat cutter under Doctor Unithumb?

[Tman]

As a mod on the Jockey Journal I deleted a gory lathe thread several years back. It was something we all should see but we did not need to see it. Dude was sucked in ...................I won't post the rest. That kid above was lucky. What did the guy first on the scene do? No thought to shutting it off? Cornfusing

[wobblywalrus]

Years ago I was fresh out of trade school and working as a machinist apprentice.  It was a job shop.  That is a machine shop that makes one or a few hundred of whatever is needed.  It was a Portugee business and I was their minority hire.  This was in the racial quota days.

An apprentice worked various machines before settling down on the one they would operate throughout their career.  I was working on the big planer.  This was a huge machine built in 1898.  The tool hung over the work.  The work was bolted to a huge table that slowly slid back and forth on tracks on the machine bed.  The machine was about 8 feet tall, 20 feet long, and 6 feet wide.

My task was planing-to-shape some cyclotron magnets.  They weighed around half a ton each.  It was dark and smoky back at the planer.  Spider webs and dust all around like in the Munsters TV show.  Grime covered light bulbs hung from cords and provided dim illumination.  There was the constant and soothing flappa flapp flappa sound from belt driven machine tools.

Keep in mind I was a guy in my early 20's who did not go to bed at a regular hour.  My job required watching the monotonous and regular movement of the planer table from left to right and right to left in front of me.  Hours on end, and day after day.  Occasionally I would reverse the tool feed or change the cutter bit height.

You can guess who the apprentice was who fell asleep with his machine running.