No gloves with lathe and mill....need citation

Vavet said:
We have a lathe and vertical mill in our workshop at work. It's always been the wild west - anyone who has access to that area can use them freely with no training or anything else. I'm trying to change that.
I've established a "steering committee" to help with this. None of us are formally trained machinists, but we all have some training and experience.

I sent out the lathe safety/operational test to the team today. One guy insists he needs to wear gloves.
I know gloves are a no-no. I'd love to find a citation from OSHA or some other occupational organization, maybe even a metalworking industry group to be able to cite instead of "I found on hobby-machinist.com" or "I found YouTube videos" or "some jackleg on the internet told me it's a bad idea."

Anybody got anything like that?
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you can wear 9mil and lighter gloves. But no woven gloves. Wearing a woven glove is super dangerous.
 
Quote: "you can wear 9mil and lighter gloves"
NO GLOVES! Not even thin ones.
You have a reflex to withdraw from pain. Ever touch something hot? You pull away even before you can think about it. Same thing with getting a sharp poke from a needle etc.
Your reflex to withdraw might leave you with a small wound on a finger.
But with a glove of any kind you lose that reflex. And you can get pulled in, lose your whole hand or arm. And worse.
 
gi_984 said:
Quote: "you can wear 9mil and lighter gloves"
NO GLOVES! Not even thin ones.
You have a reflex to withdraw from pain. Ever touch something hot? You pull away even before you can think about it. Same thing with getting a sharp poke from a needle etc.
Your reflex to withdraw might leave you with a small wound on a finger.
But with a glove of any kind you lose that reflex. And you can get pulled in, lose your whole hand or arm. And worse.
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I have to respectfully disagree with this 100%. No human has reflexes fast enough to pull away in time if you stick your hand into a moving spindle, a lathe chuck, or a bandsaw blade. My beaten up hands (thankfully by a Chinese mini lathe initially) can atest to that. And I have pretty good reflexes in general.

There are people that have sensitive skin and wearing let's say nitrile (surgical style) gloves around rotating machinery doesn't make it any less safe in my opinion. Even if the "feel a sharp prick, pull away" to save your hand from a fly cutter was true, believe me, you would feel it the same way through a nitrile glove. Also it rips to shreds at the slightest sharp touch.

Anyone writing safety policies should first and foremost recognise the primary reason for doing do. If it is to prevent organisational liability in case of injury "no gloves whatsoever" is perfectly fine, but if the goal is to prevent injury you have to recognise some people have to wear skin protection against greases and oils used in a machine shop. In such case using a very light, tight fitting, non woven (for example nitrile), gloves can be made acceptable if phrased correctly(so some smartypants doesn't bring his heavy rubber floor scrubbing gloves and call them ok).
 
Flynth,
I firmly disagree. Your reflex will not stop an injury. It is to minimize. A glove will be caught and pulled in around a rotating tool or into a roller.
When handling oils, solvents, etc sure you can wear gloves if you have a sensitivity to it. But no gloves when operating machine tools.
 
markba633csi said:
I'm still amazed that high schools (and jr. high) had shop classes with real, live machines. Only one teacher and he couldn't be everywhere.
I knew some kids were so dumb they were bound to be injured or killed- fortunately for them and the school district they were usually cutting class
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I was thinking of donating a DIY CNC router I made. to the local High school, I didn't know they didnt allow power tools.
I have long hair, I really worry about getting tangled up in one my bigger lathes.
Working with micro lathes then switching to the 25HP lathe scares the crap out me.
 
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gi_984 said:
Flynth,
I firmly disagree. Your reflex will not stop an injury. It is to minimize. A glove will be caught and pulled in around a rotating tool or into a roller.
When handling oils, solvents, etc sure you can wear gloves if you have a sensitivity to it. But no gloves when operating machine tools.
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Just to clarify. These are the kind of gloves I'm taking about.
Compress_20230326_183232_2895.jpg
They are so thin and easy to rip it's impossible to be pulled in by them. If we still disagree that's fine.
 
Headhunter Pipe Co said:
I was thinking of donating a DIY CNC router I made. to the local High school, I didn't know they didnt allow power tools.
I have long hair, I really worry about getting tangled up in one my bigger lathes.
Working with micro lathes then switching to the 25HP lathe scares the crap out me.
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If you can put your hair under your shirt to keep it under control
And don't tie with a braid or rubber band, bit makes it pull harder off your scalp if it does get caught. You have a better chance with loose hair.
 
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If you want documentation on why you should never wear gloves around machinery, I can send you a photo of my left hand.
 
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