Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] injuries from your machine?

ballendo wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Over on the master5 group we have had a thread on safety issues,
> which prompts me to ask you all:
>
> Have you suffered any injury in the use of your "homebuilt" or home
> retrofitted CNC, EDM, or DRO system? Has someone you "allowed" (or
> maybe DIDN'T allow) to use the machine gotten hurt?
>
> Ballendo
>
> P.S. I do remeber Jon E saying he had his hand caught during a manual
> move, but I think he managed to escape without injury.

Yes, that's right. I hit the WRONG button, and brought a boring head
down on my hand, which was holding it up in the spindle, as I'd already
released the drawbar, but didn't have enough room to bring the boring
head all the way out fo the spindle. I wanted to raise the spindle, but
lowered it instead! This is a typical "dumb operator" mistake, obviously
not the fault of the CNC system, and clearly an unsafe thing to do.

It mashed 2 fingers between the boring head and the vise. I spent about
1/2 second trying to figure out whether I made a mistake or the CNC
system did, and finally figured I was a lot more fallible than EMC. I had to
decide whether to E-stop and wind the Z axis up manually, or just press
the right button, carefully. This seemed a lot faster, so I pressed the right
button, and the quill came up. My fingers were sore for about 2 weeks, but
it wasn't really bad.

I have broken off at least 2 end mills by carelessly jogging the machine
around during setup. One of them was pretty spectacular, with the broken
half singing loudly as it spun some 20 feet across the shop, pinging loudly
off the wall and flying back the other way. This could have caused injury
if someone had been in the path of that piece of tool!

I have botched a few workpieces when I failed to set the Z axis offset
properly, and rammed a drill bit into the work at 45 IPM, or jogged with
the wrong button.

None of these things is really an EMC problem, just operator carelessness.

Jon