I have visited a site today that manufactures pallets, the guys are firing 1000's of nails per day, yet they only seem to be wearing basic EN166 safety glasses.

I've spent the last hour trying to determine what the correct standard of eye protection should be for this application and believe me there is a lack of information out there.

The speed of the nail when fired is 430 m/second. The safety features and training involved in using nails guns means that only a malicious act of misfiring would result in the nail hitting at that speed.

On occasions misfired nails can hit knots in the wood and be deflected which would take a lot of energy out of the projectile, this is a rare occurrence but foreseeable (once per year), with this in mind what is the right level of eye protection?

Goggles full face masks would be unpopular choice. Good quality high impact safety glasses with side protection are there any recommendations out there?

Thanks

Mersey,

OK the projectile leaves the gun at 430m/s, what is the mass of the nail, and how far will it travel remembering that immediately it is fired it no longer has any propulsion and all energy is merely in the mass and exit velocity.

I am guessing that these are pneumatic or electric guns rather than cartridge shot fired?

It should be very difficult to generate a misfire where the nail leaves the gun when not at the point of application, if it happens at all, then they have other issues that eye protection will not resolve! ;)

Where I am going with the spedd/mass question is to see how much energy that the nail has then you might be able to look at how far it would travel and how quickly the energy would dissipate until it gets to a level where it would not even pierce the eye let alone a safety spectacle.  Remember it's not rocket science because the mass is constant! ;) ;) ;)

It may be hundreds of feet, it may be just a few inches, I honestly don't know, and if I try it with my little DIY air operated nailer, then it's probably not going to be the same! ;)

You may be overthinking it, you may not, do you know who the gun OEM is, and have you checked their data, probably be available online?

They should be specifying this for compliance with the SMSR.