The General Requirements For Guarding Of Machinery: Adelaide

By Author: Patricia Millay
Total Articles: 6
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Multiple requirements for machine guarding are provided to protect the operator and other involved employees in the machine area from hazards… What are these general requirements?

Ideally, machine guards should be affixed to the machine where possible and secured elsewhere if for some reason connection or attachment to the machine is not possible to prevent access to the hazard from all accessible approaches including front, back, bottom and top side. The most common examples of guarding methods include: two-hand tripping devices or electronic safety devices, and barrier guards.

Machines should always be operated with safety guards in place except when a guard has to be detached following a documented procedure, such as machine maintenance, that ensures personnel protection. Such tasks may cover those for repair or adjustment. Machine guards should be reattached before the machine is put back in use.

Special hand feeding equipment for placing and removing material should be such as to allow optimal and safe handling of materials without the operator placing a hand in the hazardous ...
... zone. Such tools should not be used as a substitute for other guarding required by this policy, but should only be utilized to supplement protection presented.

Basic Areas Requiring Guarding of Machinery: Adelaide

The hazardous moving parts in three basic areas require effective safeguarding:
• Point of Operation – The area on a machine where major work is actually performed on the raw material being processed (e.g., shaping, cutting, forming of stock, boring);
• Power Transmission Mechanism – Every internal component of the mechanical system which produces and transmits energy to the part of the machine performing the work (e.g., pulleys, flywheels, belts, couplings, connecting rods, spindles, cams, chains, gears, and cranks); and
• Other moving components – All components of the machine which move while the machine is in use including, but not limited to, rotating, reciprocating, and transverse moving parts, as well as feed mechanisms and auxiliary parts of the machine.

When blades are exposed…
When the edges of the blades of a fan is less than seven feet above the floor or working level, the blades will need to be guarded, and the guard should have openings no larger than one-half inch in diameter.

Anchoring Fixed or Mounted Machinery
All machineries made for a fixed location should be securely anchored to prevent rolling or moving of the machinery. To ensure total effectiveness, anchoring should be done during machine installations. Adelaide machine engineering-experts stress the importance of anchoring, since nonessential motion can be dangerous, possibly gripping through clothing and forcing unwanted skin contact.

Hazardous Mechanical Motions and Actions

Any rotating motion can be very dangerous since it can grip clothing, and through mere skin contact, force an arm or hand into a dangerous quandary. The danger doubles when projections such as set screws, nicks, bolts, abrasions, and projecting keys or set screws are exposed on rotating parts. Parts can rotate in opposite directions while their axes are parallel to each other, requiring guarding of machinery. Adelaide requires machines to be guarded when it comes to these situations.

For more info about machine guarding, see the page.