Pipe Fitting

I am confused...I googled the machine, it looks to me that you are using it for it's designed purpose! Or do you mean you are actually using it to assemble the connections?

yes, we are using it to tighten the connections.

we have been using these machines for the past 20 years in this application, I will wager we wore out all of 20 of them.

About a month ago an employee pinched a finger with it, (First accident that I know of, I have been here for 10 years now).

Safety officer reads the investigation, reads the manual, now we are fitting by hand.

go figure!!!!

I sympathise.....

These people are fine where they are saving lives and capable of using their initiative.....

Some are just a burden on our industries, making us uncompetitive. It's a tricky balancing act.

I bet it's just as easy to pinch your finger doing it by hand?

Maybe if you write a 'policy and proceedure' for the use of the machine.

Unless the manufacturer specifically says it is dangerous you should be ok....

surely 'not recomended' is not a prohibition?

I hate it when people slavishly adhere to 'guidelines' ..our local council was going to fit 'speed humps' 5 metres from the end of a cul de sac!!! Just because the guidelines said they should be fitted every 30m....and 'We won't get funding if we don't follow the guidelines'

I went blue in the face trying to explain that 'guidelines' are for guidance...they are not mandatory.......waste of breath.

Who was it said 'rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools'?

I always say...

'Every man is his own safety officer'

Good luck...

Del

The same thing happened at our company. The worker wasn't paying attention and got his sleeve caught in the chain - broke his arm. The machine is now "quarantined" which I find completely stupid. Other workers have bump a hip on the corner of a table and actually blamed the table! Health & Safety department is having us round corners and install protective devices (rubber "booth") so employees won't get hurt. The place looks like a room for the mentally ill !!

I'm guessing that their houses have no sharp objects or corners on their walls or...

Gotta stop.....I'm getting angry again....

Yeah,

So when are people going to take the blame for their own actions? It is so hard to design for every little possibility that inattentiveness and stupidity can mustard up.

So how fast do you have to be driving to put down the newspaper and the cup of coffee?

Sometimes I wonder how these people can function outside of the company. But then again, I know that they are only like that because management/Health&Safety let them. If the government was doing the same, we'd all roll around in big bubbles where nobody could get hurt. Completely insane.

I got hurt plenty of times working on different projects and always took it as a learning experience...just like a kid learning about how fire is hot. You rarely make the same mistake twice; yet when you overprotect people, they will/do repeat their mistakes over and over again.

Anyway, we could talk about this forever but I'd get too PO'd (3rd definition)...

At least I know some people are still on the "sane" side....Thanks jrpeck...

Thank you for you comment.

The hierarchy for safety would be to eliminate the hazard.

If it cannot be eliminated then we guard against the hazard.

If we cannot guard against the hazard then we rely on knowledge, training and experience.

I do not know of anyone who has not made a mistake. I do know plenty of people including myself who have made mistakes and fortunate to be alive.

Having people take responsibility for their own actions would be excellent but when things go wrong they end up in hospitals that we all pay for, they end up on welfare because they cannot work, they end up with their spouses leaving them, they cannot play with their children because they are minus a leg, or blind or a hand or a finger.

Having people accountable for their own actions also means that they should be able to have total control and an employee does not have total control. He or she is subject to the restrictions placed upon them by their employer.

Having people take responsibility is simply one method for the rest of us as a society to absolve ourselves of the duty we have towards each other to help protect each other. In fact we can measure a society by evaluating how it cares for the most vulnerable in society.

Imagine the chaos if the principal of self - responsibility was applied to the road.

I pray that you continue to work in a safe environment and that nothing ever, ever happens to you.

Thank you for your comment.

Imagine the chaos if the principal of self - responsibility was applied to the road.

???

Surely it is?

On the road we are all responsible for ourselves and others...

Those headlights aproaching at night? We all 'trust' that the driver is on the correct side of the road. There isn't a safety barrier! (well there is on some roads...but you get the point!).

Our cars don't have the cheap easilly afforable doppler radar fiitted to prevent us following too close!

Maybe we need that safety officer designing cars?

Absolutely correct, we are responsible for ourselves on the road but this is qualified by the fact that we are bound within Regulatory Requirements. The maximum speed for example is dictated to us. We do not merely say that I can drive as fast as I want because I am responsible (everybody else may be crazy but not me).

In the same way employers , supervisors and workers in a workplace have duties that they are bound to in accordance to Regulatory Requirements set by our governments.

You need to go over his head [safety officer].

make a presentation to someone in charge of $'s

maybe print up some charts, promintly display the amount of money this method save in man hours & workmans comp [ repetive injuries, carple tunnel.....].

make sure that much less work is getting done, the backlog of unfinished jobs needs to show an increase, sounds like another graph to include

you should also request more tools [ pipe stands, work tables, pipe wrenches ] &

don't forget the increased labor of removing the sharp edges, from having to take multiple bites when working by hand!

speak in term of decreased revenues, lower morale.................

do not attack the "safety officer" & try to include some way for him to save face, you could even try to make it seem to be his idea.

in other words work the system against itself

All the comments to date were very interesting to read and I can identify with all of them. However, whether we agree or disagree the fundamental requirement for the safety of a worker as it relates to machinery is that the worker does not have access to the exposed moving parts. The onus is on the manufacturer preventing the access and not on the worker gaining the access. I guess that the idea is that as humans we make mistakes and we must minimize the consquences of those mistakes. The question is always how far does one go. When I do training in safeguarding of machinery I ask them that perhaps the following can be used as a guide as to whether it is "safe" or not. If the person performing this task was my son or daughter would I feel comfortable and be able to sleep at night".

When the 535 is used as a threading machine there is no reason for a worker to access the exposed moving parts but the worker does have access and therefor technicall in violation of relevant regulation and standards. It can be stated however that the risk is somewhat low since the times the operator is required to interact with the machine is loading, starting the thread (for which the risk is very small) and unloading). When the same machine is used to assemble the machine is being used for a purpose for which it was not intended which is difficult to defend against. Secondly the worker is interacting with the forces of the machine against which they do not stand a chance. The trick would be for the assembly to take place withour the worker having to perhaps at times wrestle with the machine to fit the assembly.

For a 535 machine to perform such work one requirement that could be considered is the use of a foot operated switch such that if a worker release his/her foot (or if the worker presses his/ her foot) the machine would perform an emergency stop thereby avoiding or limiting the consequences to the worker. The run would be in the centre position. This would require that the motor be fitted with a brake to minimize the stop time in the event that a worker did become entangled in the machine.

"If the person performing this task was my son or daughter would I feel comfortable and be able to sleep at night".

When I was a young boy, my dad showed me how to work with certain types of machinery (press drill, impact gun, etc) and by the time I was 12, I would disassemble whatever "toy" I had at the time (bicycle, ATV, motorcycle) and using these tools to fix/modify them. Instead of shielding me from "the danger", my dad taught me how to use my head and therefore prevent injuries. I've been passing those lessons to my kids so that they can quickly identify the potential risks and decide on the best course of action to minimize the danger.

Awareness is the best safety guard you can have.

We are considering enveloping all employees in padded suits hard hats and safety gloves and glasses when they walk through the door each morning. Now there arguing about the colors and materials to be used. Kevlar or satin and lace?

OK,

I have the responsibility as Safety Manager where I work. I know is tough sometimes to make a decesion as to whether a practice is safe or not. I have used the 535 machine for the same purpose as described and yes I know it is against the standard safety practice.

I also like to think practically. I am also the manager of the maintenance department at the same company. When following the rules to the letter you will have difficult decisions to make at some point or another. I have discovered over the many years that educating employees properly can give a little leeway to the letter of the rules.

Education is the best way you can avoid accidents. I would agree with the suggestion for switching and having a braking mechanism however this will be a bit of a pain to retrofit on this machine. Your 535 machine can be guarded to prevent getting snagged in the machine and tooling can be used safely as long as the tool is placed before starting the machine.

As a suggestion I think if you document the incedents related to the machine and give a proper operating procedure for the purpose you are using the machine for you can still comply with OSHA reg's.

There are a great many pieces of equipment in use today that are not doing the job they were originall intended for, however they are being use in a specific manner which is covered by a proper operating procedure and proper guarding.

At any rate it never pays to circumvent proper safety devices at any time or place any part of you body in any moving part of a machine no matter how well your trained or how fast you think you are.

Sorry for being long winded.

You don't have to interact as much as you might think to tighten a fitting with a pipe threader if you start the fitting and set your wrench to lock in before you start up the machine motor. If one does it right they can stand back away from the machine while it is tightening. I can assume from experience that someone was trying to start the fitting with the motor running or trying to hold the back up wrench instead of letting it lodge against the machine.This probably doesn't matter though because it sounds like the safety person may have been charged with doing something to solve the problem by a superior person. It is most of the time easier to just say don't do it than to work with people to find a way to do it safe and set guild-lines. I work in a large (2500 ton/day) paper mill and we have just hired a new safety man that has vowed to straighten out the mill. By doing this they have not only redesigned the wheel yet again but made allot of the rules near impossible to work with. The one that comes to mind is: that you have to have at least one hand on the handrail at all times when going up or down a stairway. The problem with doing things this way is that everyone goes through an expensive learning curve before they get to the point they can comfortably work and abide by the new rules. And usually it is at this time when someone else decides they have a better way and starts to change it all again. I am all for safety but there is a point where you have to say enough is a enough and rely on the people using their heads to keep from making mistakes that cause accidents.

pipewelder

Some 'safety measures' are actually dangerous.

Those guards they put on pillar drills (drill presses) are just a hazard!

They stop you seeing the work piece, they don't move up and downd smoothy, they can snag, they are just a hinderance, and in the event of a work piece snatching(why didn't you clamp i?t) or a drill jamming it would provide no protection.

On my home pillar drill I discarded it as soon as I unpacked it, at work I have to grin and bear it.

Do you guys agree and are there any other devices which do more harm than good?

While all comments may be perfectly valid in their own context we must acknowledge that these people are required to enforce the regulations and standards. In some cases they themselves are not in agreement with the regulations. However, it is a political decision as to the context of the regulations and it is for the courts to determine whether compliance to the intent of the regulations have been met and not make judgement on the regulations.

The political decisions are made based on a bunch of stuff but idealistically they are supposed to be based on the social and moral values of a society.

If a hazard exists sooner or later someone will get hurt irrespective of their past record. Lack of accidents does not constitute a safe procedure.

Perhaps you everyone should contact their political representative and voice the concerns to them and not take aim at those who are trying to do their work.

I for one cannot in honesty state that I have never made a mistake around a machine. I can state that I am still around by the will of God.

You may want to look at the Sept 6, 2000 of the 106 Congress of the USA where it specifies a 15 year imprisonment term for a fatality and 5 years for an injury as it relates to product safety.

Gentlemen

I agree with all of you whole heartedly,

The joints are screwed together by hand, locked into the jaws and tightened with the machine, The problem started when an employee failed to remove his hand from under the pipe wrench when he started the rotation.

If it was the "Company" Safety officer we would be able to make a procedure, and train the men operating the machine. It's not, we are dealing with OH&S. This guy has tunnel vision. Until we can get an engineer to stamp some kind of modification to the machine to hold the pipe wrench,we are fitting by hand.

I was just wondering if there was one out there somewhere that was designed to do this job already. Be it a modification that has been stamped, or a whole new machine.

Thanks

Wes

I have never saw a machine designed for tightening fittings that was for sell. I have seen many companies that use the ridged threader for this like you all used to. The reason no one offers one for sell is probably because the threader works so good. It may be worth it to get an engineering co. to come up with a design and procedure and stamp the thing for this use. I use to help put in hydraulic elevators in 2-4 story office buildings and guess what the guy used to bore the 12" hole for the shaft to fit in? He would attach the threader head to the elevator carriage and chuck up a pc. of 2" sch. 40 pipe with the 12" auger head attached to one end. He would drill about 6 ft at a time by lowering the carriage and re-chuck the pipe and go another 6 foot. When he would get to 20ft. just put on another pipe via threaded coupling and keep drilling. most of the holes he drilled were around 30-50 ft deep and were in clay.

pipewelder

ridgid 300 pipe machine

Sorry

Page 3 of the Operators manual states "Do not use this machine to make or break fittings"

But:

The way that you use it to thread or cut pipe is no safer than the way we use it for fitting, we are using a pipe wrench instead of the hand cutter or the reamer.

This just makes me sick!!!!

Thanks for the heads up on this machine

I am going to show the manual to the officer.

Maybe he will see the light.