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Posted By John Noblet
A firm with whom I work are sheet metal workers and employ about 190 people.
They handle sheet mild steel from 1mm thick to 2.5mm thick and with a maximum sheet size of 2060 x 1250.
They have a problem with cuts to hands and fingers of employees and to which they have not been able to find a satisfactory solution.
The company have quite a number of automatic and semi automatic presses, press brakes, punch brakes and some folding and cutting machines.
Mechanical handling aids have been provided wherever possible and the engineering controls referred to in the HSE guidance has been implemented as far as possible.
There is a need to handle the sheet steel and the pressed components with resulting cuts.
Various types of gloves have been tried, from riggers leather gloves to kevlar without a satisfactory outcome. Differing gloves fail for differing reasons. One of the problems is that a good degree of dexterity is required to operate some of the machines, which the heavier type of glove does not permit. Sharp edges snag kevlar.
This must be a problem faced by many sheet metal workers.
Has anybody found a solution?
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Posted By Merv Newman
John,
I do a lot of work with the automobile industry where many of the risks are as you described. Kevlar gloves have been found to be a major part of the solution. Other actions include :
* automatic (robot) handling of sheet metal and stamped parts. Expensive and not always possible.
* a good glove replacement policy (on demand if not before)
* good enforcement of the glove wearing policy, and management example.
* analysis, with glove manufacturers of glove failures, with modification of the gloves if necessary
* TRAINING (caps because it is very important) on how to handle sheet metal without it cutting you or slicing into the glove.
Hope that helps
Merv Newman
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Posted By Gavin Barr
John, you can get help from the HSE information sheet: "Preventing injuries from the manual handling of sharpedges in the engineering industy" Engineering Sheet No.16. This can be accessed via the HSE web site.
I work in the same industry and found this sheet to be of great help.
If you need any more help then you can contact me directly and I will see what I can do.
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Posted By Karen Todd
Hello John,
In a company I used to work for, the CNC operators would do deburring work while the next sheet ran. Some of the sheets with a lot of holes to be punched took up to 20 mins to run. Deburring was done at a pedestal grinder beside the CNC machine - obviously gloves were not worn at the pedestal grinder.
We also had lasers, so there wasn't the problem with the burrs on lasered parts.
The other thing we used was a linisher - a machine with a big sanding belt. You just set the pieces on the conveyor and they came out the other side with a grained finish and the burrs smoothed off.
Very small parts got put in a thing we called a tumbler. It was that long ago I can hardly recall it but I think it was literally a machine with a drum and grains in it which tumbled the parts and wore away the burrs.
Some of the parts were designed with a hem so that assembly operators weren't at risk from sharp edges.
These worked well for flat parts, I cannot recall what we did with formed parts. However, with doing the deburring/linishing at CNC, it meant that the burrs/sharp edges were removed before the parts moved on to brake press, etc so this limited the number of people at risk from sharp edges.
Regards,
Karen
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Posted By Dave Daniel
As ex-group safety adviser for Rover Group and having started in H&S in 1973 in a 7,000 strong sheet metal and pressing plant at Castle Bromwich in Brum perhaps I can add my twopennyworth:
Press operators handling heavy panels at Castle Bromwich always wore pre-washed leather gloves, and would not wear new unwashed gloves. The washing took out natural grease and made them more cut resistant. You couldn't sew pre-washed leather, as we later found out.
For lighter operations Rover also developed their own glove standard which was adopted by a number of suppliers and other manufacturers, which was essentially a good cotton/chrome leather glove.
Strangely the Cowley plant press shop always insisted on wearing two pairs of cotton gloves, one inside the other as they claimed leather got slippery. They went through hundreds of thousands of pairs. I never saw any evidence that this was successful, and personally would have always chosen leather gloves.
We did some trials of an Ansell Edmont glove which was PVC/Nitrile coated and advertised for sheet metal handling. The sizes did not match the BS hand sizes and the fingers were short but they lasted for 2 weeks not 2 hours at Cowley, although never adopted. This was some years ago in the 1980's and Kevlar was only just coming in.
Whatever you do there will always be some cuts. Poor tooling and maintenance can result in sharper ragged edges on panels. We also were very careful about issuing armlets and gloves with good wrist protection.
Of course just choosing a glove on the basis of its claimed EC performance is a recipe for trouble!
Good luck!
Dave Daniel - Safety Consultant - Coventry
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Posted By David Brede
This is quite an interesting thread as in the rail industry certain areas of Network Rail have mandated the use of gloves for manual handling which for trackside work includes a lot of steel handling.
Therefore we now have to consider risk assessing NOT using gloves!
Has any other industry had this problem before?
Best wishes
David
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Posted By Steve Sedgwick
We have done numerous trials on numerous gloves over the years to prevent cuts and puncture wounds to our Slitter Operators.
Thin gauge steel is slit which leaves the edges very sharp and scrap edges from this is even worse.
We have used a glove provided by Arco (Sheffield)called a "Multipost"; I believe they are manufactured in France. These have a high cut and puncture resistance, also dipped to make them oil resistant.
Yes the operators will have to sacrifice some dexterity to get this level of protection but after a couple of weeks they get used to it.
These gloves made an enormous impact in reducing injuries in these areas.
good luck
Steve
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Posted By John Mackessack
We used to supply engineers replacing sharp-edged quartzware from tools with a glove made from Dyneema fabric with a palm coating of a polymer material.
Dyneema is similar to Kevlar so may not work with sheet metal, but may be worth a try. They are especially useful if a high level of dexterity is required.
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