Posted By Nigel Souster I seem to recall a conversation a long time ago, that there was on the market a life like hand/limb that could be placed near/into machinery to evaluate the likely damage that could be caused. Can anyone tell me if they are still available or if this was just another weird dream. Background info:- We have 6 machines that the local HSE inspector wants us to add additional guarding to. This would be very expensive and in my view beyond reasonably practicable. In the 11 years we have had these machines we have had no instances where the original manufacturers guarding was disabled, which led to any injury. All staff working on these machines are trained, competant workers. The HSE arguement is that the severity of the injury would be high, so if I could prove that the injury would not be as severe as the inspector believes, we can state very low likelihood and low harm to bolster our arguement. We are not trying to save a few pennies over the safety of our staff, but it seems to me we will be spending money for the sake of spending it. Anyone help or should I just use a shoulder of pork? Regards, Nigel

Posted By Crim I used to use a pen, a simple bic biro. As far as I was concerned if a pen can get in so can a small person's finger. You may not have any small people there at present but sometime in the future you may employ an apprentice or a small female. I would go with the inspector's advice.

Posted By Merv Newman I have, somewhere in the office, if you are interested I could look it up, guidelines for guarding and the sizes of holes/distance from moving parts. Basically, if the hole just allowed the entry of a finger then moving parts had to be more than a finger length away. If it just allowed entry of a hand or arm then moving parts had to more than an arm's length away. Merv