Emergency Plan for Entrapment Rescue

If someone gets trapped in your punch press, robotic cell or other piece of machinery, can you free the person quickly without causing further injury?

Members of your workforce likely know how to operate your equipment better that anyone else such as firefighters, police or anyone else called to assist in such a rescue.

When someone becomes trapped in machinery, incorrect action or failure to act may cause further injury or death to the victim. An emergency plan is paramount.

A good emergency plan consists of:

• Trained entrapment rescue team members such as millwrights, electricians, first aiders and supervisors.
  
• Trained non-members of the entrapment rescue team who may be first at the scene of a trapped person.
  
• A listing of the members of the entrapment rescue team posted in a conspicuous place.
  
• A means of notifying team members should an entrapment occurs.
  
• A set of well-developed entrapment rescue procedures for each machine.
  
• A cart or box containing tools and equipment necessary for rescue purposes.
  
• Scheduled practice of simulated entrapment situations by the entrapment rescue teams.
  

Suitable Guarding

Countless times I observe guards or guarding devices on machines that are not suitable. The Occupational Health and Safety Act states that a machine shall be shielded or guarded so that product, material being processed or waste stock will not endanger the safety of any worker. A single kind of guard or guarding device does give suitable protection for all different guarding applications.

Please consider the following example of a machine that always runs production parts in automatic or continuous mode. In this example, the operator has to enter the danger zone infrequently to change tooling or for maintenance work. The potential exists whereby parts of the processed material or tooling can break and be ejected out of the front of the machine.

The ejected parts may hit and injure an operator or someone walking by the machine. Are safety light curtains the best way of guarding the machine?

In this case, the safety light curtains would signal a stop of the machine if someone enters the danger zone. If set up properly, dangerous motion of the machine would cease before a person can get trapped or injured. It would not prevent anything from flying out of the machine and hitting someone.

A solid interlocked guard is often the preferred choice in this situation. If designed properly and set up correctly, it stops dangerous motion of the machine when entering the danger zone and may stop objects ejected from the machine.  

It is wise to determine suitable guarding prior to purchase or manufacture of guards and guarding devices. 

There is a distinct difference in purpose of the two blocking devices.  A ram block is used when working under the ram when a die is not installed in the press.  It must be adjusted to bridge the entire gap between the upper and lower surfaces.  The die block would usually be too short to meet this requirement.  A die block is usually a better choice if working between the upper and lower die surfaces.  If a ram block is used is this situation, the ram should be prevented from descending but the top die section could descend if clamping for the top section failed.

“incorrect action or failure to act may cause further injury or death to the victim”