The company manufactures beverage cans.
The man is suffering from epilepsy and due to the illness he experiences seizures with states of confusion for several minutes. For safety reasons, injury from running machinery must be ruled out while performing the job. Given the rarity of the seizures and the existing physical and mental capacity, with no medication side effects, the man is otherwise capable of performing the duties of a machinist full-time without endangering himself or others.
The man works for the company as a skilled machinist or lathe operator.
The cutting machine operator works in the company's maintenance department, which is located in a workshop or workshop room. In addition to several employees who maintain and repair the equipment in production, he is part of the permanent staff of the department with two to three other employees. In addition to some material cabinets, there is a conventional lathe, a milling machine and a lathe converted as a roller grinding machine. So far, the machinist operates these three machines, spending most of his time working on the actual lathe. A risk assessment carried out with the support of a technical advisor from the Integration and Inclusion Office showed that there is a risk potential with regard to the existing possibility of occurrence on all three machines. This risk can be limited on the roller grinding machine, as only a radial infeed takes place during machining and a shielding option can therefore be implemented.
The risk when working with the milling machine can be high or low, depending on the machining process. However, special attention must be paid to the main workstation, the actual lathe. The workpieces to be machined have a maximum diameter of approximately 80
mm, with lengths of up to 2
m. A typical work order is, for example, the renewal of a certain axis section. To do this, the axle must be turned off at this point, a suitable bushing made from raw material on the lathe, and after shrinking on this bushing, the axle must be turned off again at this corresponding point to the nominal dimension. A computer-controlled lathe (
CNC lathe) can only be used to a limited extent for these operations.
The roller grinding machine could be secured by an additional protective hood in such a way that the remaining residual danger is only slight. In addition, the handle bolts on the handwheels, which were inserted vertically and therefore protruded, were removed so that they would not cause injury in the event of a possible fall. The milling machine was set up higher so that, in the event of a fall, the cutting mechanic would prefer to slide downwards and not fall into the machining process. The height of the installation was based on the height of the operator. The same applied to the hand wheels of the milling machine as to the roller grinding machine. The existing lathe was replaced by a new one with a protective hood that can be pulled from the chuck to the tool slide and has a contact switch. The contact switch is coupled to the slide of the lathe, so that machining is only possible when the protective hood is closed. The height of the set-up was also based on the height of the cutting machine operator. As personal protective equipment, he now wears a suitable protective cap to prevent head injuries in the event of a seizure or fall. By using a personal monitoring system, coupled with the machine operated by the lathe operator, the immediate stop of the respective machine can now be triggered in the event of a seizure. Should a fall occur, this can be cushioned by a work mat.
The lathe was 50 percent funded and the remaining costs were 100 percent funded by the Integration and Inclusion Office. Advice was provided by the Technical Advisory Service of the Integration and Inclusion Office.
