During a recent 3rd party (Q, S & E) audit at our premises, the external auditor raised a corrective action on ourselves regarding the lack of fixed guarding on 2 Magnetic or 'Mag' Drills within our Fabrication Shop.

In the audit close out meeting at the end of the day we questioned his decision to raise this corrective action but he refused to back down and stated that "any moving spindles on drilling machines must be adequately guarded" and therefore the CA still stands.

Now it is of my opinion that these 'Mag' Drills do not require fixed guarding as they are classed as portable equipment, rather like a hand held pistol drill.
I have been working with and involved in work equipment of this nature for over 12 years and never seen a fixed guard on a drill of this type to date.

As a side issue - both Magnetic Drills in question are complete with emergency stop controls, have been fully risk assessed and are part of a strict maintenance regime.

Any comments or guidance on the issue would be much appreciated.

Thanks

These guards whilst available and valuable, will increase the overhead of using these portable and easily changed devices, so be prepared for some overhead in implementing this, financial & managerial!

Also I do believe the auditor is being a little over zealous.

You also need to be aware of possible initial decreases in quality due to the users getting things wrong with these guards interfering with their view of the cutting point.

Yes bits & spindles should be guarded as far as reasonably practicable...

John,
Yes the holes may be centre punched, however, this will not assist in the location of the cutter as these "mag" drills are used with annular hole cutters, this is the science behind how they can cut such large diameter holes in such resilient materials as structural steel with such a low power requirement.
They tend to move on engagement, and unfortunately the centre punch mark does little to help the location of the drilled hole as there is no centre point in the annular cutter!
Unlike when used with a twist drill which has a centre point to locate.
Many of these "sorts" of machine are unsuitable for use with twist drills.

Oh and yes the guards do get damaged easily!

Thankyou for your comment Paul.
I have used magnetically held drills for decades to bore/cut/ drill thousands of holes.
I suggest you look at rotabor cutters, which come with a telescopic centre locator.

http://www.reca-uk.com/r...5_497975539687718805.pdf

The magnetic attachments hold them very well as long as the material they are holding onto is clean, paint-free and the devices have undamaged bottoms.
THOUSANDS of holes ALL with guards used. I bave seen these machines come loose when working and shatter the cutters/drills.

john, nick,
I have never had the pleasure of the cutters with the centre pin!
Never been able to afford expensive ones like that, and to be honest, have never seen them, so I apologise, I guess that everyone I have worked with/for was too tight to buy good cutters too!
All of the cutters I have ever had exposer to as a user, supplier and when I was at a sharpening company have been plain annular.
Oh and yes I have seen them shatter, not pretty.

Worst was back in the 80's when an apprentice, one of the production operators thought it would be funny to turn off the power to the mag drill when the fitter was drilling steel work on the production line about 60 ft up.
Course, no power, no mag, on that model, drill, cable, cutter etc. crashing down into the middle of the line.
Not good!