Development of Tool Binding Detection and Multi-Hazard Mitigation Technology to Prevent Injury to Operators of Industrial Machines.

Makesafe Tools, Inc., Escondido CA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract In 2017, more than 36,000 American workers went home with amputations, lacerations, and other traumatic injuries as a result of industrial machineryi. Include the 156 fatalities and the economic impact of these injuries is estimated at $9.7 billion annuallyii. The most concerning aspect of these statistics is that many of these incidents were caused by known hazards and could have been prevented, or the severity significantly reduced, with the installation of effective machine safeguards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires machine safeguards on all machinery yet machine guarding has been on OSHA?s list of ?Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards? for over a decadeiii. At MAKESafe Tools, we describe the most common of these hazards as BREECH: tool Binding, accidental Restart, Emergency situations, hazardous Energy, and Coasting Hazardsiv. OSHA recommends engineering controls as an effective means of safeguarding against these and other hazards yet there are practical obstacles to implementing effective controls. The first obstacle is a lack of feasible abatement strategies. For tool binding and coasting hazards in particular, no practical solutions are currently available in the industry and the hazards are therefore largely unmitigated and even treated as acceptable risks to worker safety. The most significant obstacle effecting machine guarding, however, is the cost and complexity of abatement. Businesses are left to ideate, design, and integrate complex custom solutions on a machine by machine basis using a myriad of specialized controllers and components which deters companies from taking action. We propose the development of a technology to detect tool binding - a currently known but undetectable hazard ? and to prevent operator injury by mitigating the hazard in real-time. Furthermore, we propose to leverage the same hardware and technology to also mitigate other known BREECH hazards. Lastly, we propose to develop this technology in such a way that it can be installed in-line with the existing machine power cords and requires no other machine modification. This development work will make available the detection and control of a hazard that is not currently mitigated in the industry. The inclusion of complementary technologies into a single user- installable device will reduce the cost and complexity of effective machine safeguarding, thereby increasing implementation rates and preventing operator injury throughout the industry. Considering the novelty of providing this comprehensive functionality from a single device and the variety of compatible machines that may be installed downstream of the device, the aim of the proposed work is to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of such a device across three domains. These domains include hazard detectability ? the ability of the device to reliably detect said hazards, hazard avoidance ? the ability of the device to protect an operator from the hazard, and the compatibility of the device with varied downstream machine characteristics.