Lathe accident/ Warning! graphic

[threepiece]

Originally Posted by mccutter

He works in the nude with nothing on but an athletic supporter (jockstrap). Can't let his privates get entangled in anything, you know...

I did once paint an entire car wearing nothing more than a respirator. It was a 1959 Triumph.

[threepiece]

I watched a man attempt to turn a 1” diameter aluminum bar. The bar stuck out the right side of the spindle about two feet. He did not have sufficient wit to stop the lathe before the spindle sped up to full speed. The end of the bar went through a chain link fence and entered the adjacent work area.

Lucky everyone else was out for lunch, he and I were the only ones there.

[toprecycler]

Wednesday this week I and a coworker had a close call. Another coworker was disassembling a cylinder in his area. Unbeknownst to him, it was nitrogen charged , so when he was unscrewing the head, when he got to the last thread, the piston, rod and head assembly went shooting across the shop 50’. The welder, and I had just crossed that path within 10 seconds of it shooting across. Actually the other guy said he felt it brush his shirt.

It landed in the drill bits, and the alum rod end had some pretty deep cuts in it from hitting the drill flutes.

Very lucky day for us.




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[milomilo]

That is a new one to me. Never heard of a gas charged cylinder. What would be the purpose of a gas charged cylinder?

[greywynd]

There are lots of gas charged cylinders/springs in use. We used them in various dies and molds instead of mechanical springs. Shock absorbers, struts, hood and trunk ‘springs’, are all various forms of gas cylinders.

That particular cylinder is a mystery to me too though, is it normally charged with nitrogen, and it didn’t get drained? Or was someone using the nitrogen to leak test it?


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[toprecycler]

Originally Posted by greywynd

There are lots of gas charged cylinders/springs in use. We used them in various dies and molds instead of mechanical springs. Shock absorbers, struts, hood and trunk ‘springs’, are all various forms of gas cylinders.

That particular cylinder is a mystery to me too though, is it normally charged with nitrogen, and it didn’t get drained? Or was someone using the nitrogen to leak test it?


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Best we can figure is it was nitrogen charged to act like a shock absorbers, and the hydraulic part, had only like a 8” stroke. Overall the cylinder was like 6’. At the base end, there was 2 silver stickers/ covers, that after closer inspection, think was covering the nitrogen fill ports. We never got them off, and we have no way to refill it anyways, and we have no desire to deal with that type of cylinder, so we just returned it back to the customer, saying it is not a serviceable cylinder. Go buy a new one.

And now, at least for the foreseeable future, it is really hammered into our minds to be on the lookout for “these type of cylinders “ again.


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[greywynd]

Interesting. Filling them is similar to a hydraulic accumulator, using it’s basically a schrader valve like on a bicycle tire….except a much higher pressure.

We used a lot of stuff from Dadco, but there are other places too.

Here’s their info on charging equipment.

https://www.dadco.net/wp-content/upl...rdwarerevc.pdf


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[threepiece]

I thought this a good thread the tell about another close call I had with a lathe. This one is not intuitive and not related to a rotating spindle. It could happen to anyone not aware of the circumstance.

While swapping chucks on a lathe I lost my footing. The heavy chuck I was supporting landed on the ways. Lucky for the lathe my right hand was in between acting as a cushion.

While I thought at the time I had a solid footing I didn’t realize/remember the oil under the rubber mat I was standing on.

[threepiece]

Originally Posted by threepiece

I did once paint an entire car wearing nothing more than a respirator. It was a 1959 Triumph.

In case some of you fellows are wondering but are afraid to ask:

The voyeurism didn’t come into play until I was down to my briefs. At the time that car needed to be painted I was very dirty and the weather was very hot. The simple solution to minimize contaminating the job was to take my clothes off.