Lathe accident - it happens in the blink of an eye!

[TerryWerm]

We hear about these things from time to time, but this guy got complacent after many years in his machine shop and it caught up with him. I stumbled on this on YouTube today. 

So please use caution around your machines, especially with Christmas coming on. It is tempting to leave the sweatshirts and jackets on for some of us during these cold months, especially if our shops have little or no heat, but doing so can be so dangerous. Please be careful.

[34_40]

Wow, that's a bad one for certain. He is lucky in a way I guess... alive to see tomorrow.  And I am sure we all get complacent at some point around our machines, I know I have slacked off a time or two. But I do think about where I am and what I need to do.  

[chips and more]

If that was the lathe? I'm surprised it didn't kill him. He stopped it? I have a 14" and no way can my body stop it from turning. I would die all twisted up. I watch those feed screws like a hawk! No dangling clothes on this guy.

[TerryWerm]

No, he didn't stop it. In the video they said he managed to hold out against it until the motor overheated and kicked out. 

Either way, he is so very fortunate. I hate to use the work lucky, because if he had really been lucky, he would have not gotten tangled up in the first place.

[4GSR]

The carriage must of got tangled up in the chuck for it to stop and stall the motor. If the motor contactor had been sized correctly with the proper heaters. Yeah, it would have stalled and kicked out the heaters before burning out the motor. Maybe this is what happen, the news media has no clue about this stuff, neither the family spokes person, too.
I've had this happen to me running larger lathes, take too heavy of a cut and the next thing you know, the contactor kicks out, killing the motor. These machines were running big motors like 10 HP or more.
My lathes, the 14" and 15" have 3 HP motors on them. Yeah they will hog a 1/8" deep cut, not much more than that before the VFD kicks out. You think about that, if you got your hand, finger, arm caught up in that, instant hamburger meat! Bone and all!
My equipment was built before the days of instant stop brakes, e-Stop systems, and such installed on them.
Should we as homeowners of such equipment be adding such safety stuff to them?

[4GSR]

Would such safety stuff prevented this accident from happening? I doubt it.
Would safety guards helped keeping his body member out of harms way? Hard to say.

[TerryWerm]

In my opinion there is no substitute for good old fashioned common sense. Keeping gloves and loose clothing away from spinning chucks and shafts is the first line of defense. But there is always that 'what if' that we never foresee. The odd circumstance in which something dangerous occurs before we even realize why or how or what.

I have long thought that a lathe should have a horizontal safety bar running the length of the bed or lathe stand, somewhere just below the lead screws or bench top. The bar would be pivoted and connected to a master or emergency stop switch. Coming in contact with the bar and pushing it in slightly would be enough to trigger an e-stop event. It could be activated by hands, arms, belly, hips, butt or a bystander and from any point along the axis of rotating parts on the lathe.

Button e-stop switches are fine assuming that they can reached during an emergency, or you have time to locate and press it. In most cases time or lack thereof is the issue. If you become entangled in your lathe, do you have time to locate and hit the e-stop? Probably not. What if your left arm is entangled, drawing you in with your back to the e-stop which happens to be located on the front of the headstock? You certainly will not be able to reach the e-stop with your right hand! And just which hand do you think is the most likely to become entangled? Thus, the e-stop ideally should be large enough to activate it sight unseen and be accessible across the machine, but it also needs to not get in the way of normal activities on or around the machine. 

As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so this might be worth giving some careful and serious thought.

[4GSR]

A belly switch would be perfect for me! Lol.

As one mentioned on the other site I hang out on, the foot switch is totally useless in a sudden incident like this one. You're pulled in lifting your feet up away from the foot brake. Also, your body's reaction time to step on the foot brake does not happen because you body functions suddenly focuses on what is happening to your fingers, hand, arm.