Grinding...what do you do?
When I first moved to the beautiful state of Wyoming, I was a steambay cleaner. My job was to clean parts from large earthmoving equipment from the coal mines. Some of these parts were so large that I had to use an overhead crance or a forklift to move them into the steambay. Over those 4 years, I did my fair share of grinding, buffing, and painting those parts.
But one thing I thought was just "part of doing business" was whenever I was to grind on parts (or even buff), I wore my safety glasses + a faceshiled, ear plugs, and gloves.
Just yesterday, I received a call from one of our Water Division supervisors and this was the conversation:
WS: "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that XXX was grinding and got something in her eye. I didn't know if we needed to send her for a post-incident drug test?"
ME: "Is she okay? Were you able to flush it out? What was she grinding on? What was she wearing to protect her eyes?"
WS: "Safety glasses."
It was at this time that I was SHOCKED. There are so many things that can go wrong while grinding. You have dust/rust coming off the parts, flying particles (from either the grinding wheel or the part you are grinding on), and we've all seen pictures or videos of what happens when a grinding wheel/disk explodes. I err on the side of caution when it comes to objects that I am using that can potentially explode.
A long, long time ago, we had our electric motor rewinding who took a large 10-12" disc, put it on his Mac Air Sander, and was cleaning out the coil slots in a huge motor stator (8' x 8' x 8'). Obviously, this is not what the tool was designed to do and make-shift setups like these injure more employees each year. As he was in the coil slot, the disk got twisted and hit the top of the stator and the wheel exploded. Part of the wheel lodged in his left clavicle nicking an artery that proceeded to squirt blood. The apprentice that was working with him at the time, saw the blood and passed out before he could render aid.
I will be having a crucial (and critical) conversation with the Water Supervisor and the whole Division to make sure they realize the hazards of grinding.
So when you grind do you wear?
Comments (7)
Everywhere I've worked, it's always been safety glasses and a face shield. We liked using the Uvex Bionic Face Shield, as it wraps around the face and chin more than a standard face shield.
We have a strict "safety glasses and face shield while grinding" policy.
Years ago when my Manager started, he looked at the injury history and saw year after year we had multiple injuries related to foreign objects in the eye. Since he enacted the additional face shield requirement those injuries have gone down drastically!
Many years ago I had a friend who was one of our maintenance supervisors. On a weekend he was supervising and observing his crew finishing a high priority job, on the mold line. He thought he might assist his guys by getting a hand grinder and assist grinding burrs off tack welds in corners. To get the grinder in the corner he removed the wheel guard on the big hand grinder. He also decided to not to get a face shield. He removed his hard hat because it was warm and tight quarters. As he was grinding the wheel exploded and a piece hit him in the right temple about two inches above his eye. He was off work for over a year as they had to put a stainless steel plate 6"X2" in his skull because the bone was shattered . What was bad was prior to the accident was a great guy, post accident he was far from "nice", changed his entire personality! Ended up losing his job, his wife, and his family!
After that I made people grinding wear safety glasses with side shields (full-cup if possible), face shields, and if appropriate hard hats. I also cane down hard on anyone removing any guard on any grinder!
PS Not only is removing a grinder guard extremely dangerous for stone wheels, if a guard is removed all product liability is removed by the manufacturer. I worked for a self-insured WC manufacturer. If an employee had a wheel blow up and the guards were in place we had a good chance to subrogate the injury costs to the manufacturer of the equipment and regain our money. The employee could also sue the manufacturer of the equipment too. If the employee has removed guards all that goes down the drain! FYI.