- Thread starter Gragson
- Start date
The problem is school & college budgets are ever squeezed this often leads to finance managers refusing to spend money on things like courses. This particularly applies to Academies which run outside LEA control, In such cases often tickets will expire but the Head of department is still breathing down your neck for the materials & we cant let the kids down can we?
In new build schools the "Service provider" will have its own rules for its own premises staff but will pay scant regard for that of the School employees. The reason i left was because of a long standing 4 year argument over a dust extraction system that had been condemmed by one DATA consultant as totally inadequate, yet every year LEV records were fudged or falsified.
Add in the fact that "Service providers" install the crappiest cheap equipment they possibly can to maximise profit.
This is why many thousands of schools across the country have dumped D&T its seen as simply too expensive & risky to deliver.
Trevanion
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Being a professional wood machinist, putting aside the fact his hands shouldn’t have even been that close to the blade in the first place as push sticks should have been in use, he has clearly done something very, very, wrong to have been able to cut an index finger off completely if the guard was in place correctly.
I can’t see how the index finger could’ve been severed cleanly by itself without severing other fingers first or the thumb afterward, unless a really unusual method of feeding the timber was being used.
It does indeed make you wonder whether it was done on purpose, though I have seen similar unusual accidents before where an unconventional injury has occurred.
I can’t see how the index finger could’ve been severed cleanly by itself without severing other fingers first or the thumb afterward, unless a really unusual method of feeding the timber was being used.
It does indeed make you wonder whether it was done on purpose, though I have seen similar unusual accidents before where an unconventional injury has occurred.
mark roberts
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HSE legislation trump anything a service provider will set.
I lost all sympathy when I got to the used it many times without incident, wood goes in, wood comes out with a slice out of it, it's not a big step to come to the conclusion your fingers are going to suffer the same fate.
Sawstop bench saws have an emergency brake which detects the human touch and stops before finger removal, maybe better to get those into schools so they don't learn anything
Sawstop bench saws have an emergency brake which detects the human touch and stops before finger removal, maybe better to get those into schools so they don't learn anything
gaz1
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as goes for the academies thats there problem as there run like private
but for state schools training can be done with a travel setup for the main basic safety stuff they have it for employees its no difference
as goes for the machine training in school the devices are tested yearly pretraining to work the machine can be done this way
it wont be long now before every electric machine is removed from every school and all your left is with college training
Ali
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I can sympathise, I used to LEV test school D&T equipment and rarely passed stuff, I didn’t get asked back much. At one place the lid (removable to access the waste bag) was screwed down tight and had rigid pipe work which needed to be dismantled to gain access even if you were persistent enough to take out the screws. The technician gave me a blank look when I asked how they normally empty it.
Morrisman
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The college I went to for several years in the 70’s used to have a huge machine room, full of lathes, mills, shapers, drills, furnaces and hearths for heating metal red hot etc…
I went again on an open days 20 years later, just for a look around….. and that room had been emptied and was filled with a hundred desks, for teaching how to do fingernails…..
But just this year they have opened a 20 million quid extension, with a bunch of lathes and mills in, so maybe there is hope for a hands-on future for this country.
dobbslc
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That's so all the money laundering finger nail/tanning/beard greasing shops have enough trained staff to turn a profit...
Morrisman
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We have at least a dozen barber shops in my little town, they're everywhere. And any time I walk past all I see are swarthy non-indigenous males, playing with their phones…..
But is there a need for great numbers of machine operators? These is for some, but not in the numbers needed in years gone by.The college I went to for several years in the 70’s used to have a huge machine room, full of lathes, mills, shapers, drills, furnaces and hearths for heating metal red hot etc…
I went again on an open days 20 years later, just for a look around….. and that room had been emptied and was filled with a hundred desks, for teaching how to do fingernails…..
But just this year they have opened a 20 million quid extension, with a bunch of lathes and mills in, so maybe there is hope for a hands-on future for this country.
Pictures of the machine shop here in the 60s, 70s - must be over a hundred lathes, milling machines, shapers, borers, pillar drills in banks, grinders of various types and the operators for them.
Now in the same space, a couple of handfuls of middling multi-axis machines, a couple of enormous machines and a few grinders. I’m aware of one pillar drill. We make more stuff than we did in the last century, just on fewer machines.
If you are a factory or manufacturer the HSE can pay you a visit at any time. Due to a loophole in the law Schools fall outside this. In the case of our dust extraction the HSE could not do anything until the day some poor sod was actually diagnosed by their doctor with Occupational Asthma or COPD, by which time it would have been too late. Likewise a school kitchen or cookery rooms can be a filthy health hazard but the local council environmental health or food safety officer have no jurisdiction over them. So they never get inspected. Academies regularly cut corners simply because they can.
Trevanion
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I suppose there is a big difference between a factory where a worker may be exposed to horrendous work conditions for eight plus hours a day, five plus days a week for many years versus in a school where students will only be very minimally exposed to any dust over a few hours of the year at most. It wasn't that long ago that the rule was machines that are used for less than eight hours per week didn’t require any LEV at all. A technician will obviously be exposed to more dust than a student in that year, but nowhere near the same levels as an employee in a commercial entity, but I’m not saying it’s acceptable either way.
I’ve worked in places where it was considered that you had a “good days work” when you couldn’t see the other end of the workshop due to the amount of dust in the air!
Im not so sure, A technician or teacher may be exposed far more than would be acceptable in another workplace because they can get away with it.
In our case in the prep room where the circ saw, one bandsaw & planer plus laser cutter lived the WEL was exceeded after just ten minutes of sawing & stayed that way for hours. Also in the main workshop near the bandfacer where it was still way over the WEL half an hour after it had stopped.
At least they paid for filters for my own powered respirator!
Teacher i worked with left because of dust health issues. Healthy place to work it was not!
Guineafowl
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At my old school, a student cut half a finger off on the tablesaw.
Running over, the teacher said “how did you do that?!!”
The student, in shock, put his hand back and cut another finger off. “Like that”.
Moral of the story: don’t ask stupid questions.
Running over, the teacher said “how did you do that?!!”
The student, in shock, put his hand back and cut another finger off. “Like that”.
Moral of the story: don’t ask stupid questions.
Guineafowl
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This was 2006-ish.
Shiny Steve
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I've worked in engineering for 19 years and own my own sawmill. I always say to people metal cutting machines are forceful but deliberate, wood working machines are bloody sharp and incredibly fast, they take no prisoners.
An aspect we havent considered is that if you have been trained on machinery as School & other educational technicians are through DATA you have ticked a box & signed a piece of paper that says you understand & know how to operate something safely. This means the buck stops with you if you balls up.
If the machinery is defective the buck goes higher..
Also if a pupil or student gets hurt you may get sued as well as the school if you have been negligent.
I seem to remember a case in Solihull related with some relish by our DATA trainer, Where a Bandfacer (wide vertical linisher) ate a kids hand.
The Technician had set the table to belt gap at about 12mm when it should have been less than 3mm, small bit of wood, kid pushed hard & fingers & hand got dragged into the gap, the machine sanded half his hand off before it was stopped.
School got fined & with compensation it was about £250,000 iirc. Life changing injuries to the kid. HSE had a field day.
If the machinery is defective the buck goes higher..
Also if a pupil or student gets hurt you may get sued as well as the school if you have been negligent.
I seem to remember a case in Solihull related with some relish by our DATA trainer, Where a Bandfacer (wide vertical linisher) ate a kids hand.
The Technician had set the table to belt gap at about 12mm when it should have been less than 3mm, small bit of wood, kid pushed hard & fingers & hand got dragged into the gap, the machine sanded half his hand off before it was stopped.
School got fined & with compensation it was about £250,000 iirc. Life changing injuries to the kid. HSE had a field day.
