Gloves and Grinders – UNSAFE OSHA

If there is a worse combination than grinders and gloves, I don’t know what it is, except perhaps for gloves and a drill.
We posted a really cool video on our career blog about making a light saber sword here. But we were shocked to see the guys in the video wearing heavy leather gloves while working with grinders.

By “grinders,” we mean abrasive belt grinders, bench grinders, pedestal grinders, surface grinders, and also abrasive cutoff machines.

Sanders, polishers, and buffers that involve rotating wheels or transversing motion are also included in this classification for the purposes of hazard analysis.
Here are 6 reasons to not wear/not permit the wearing of gloves while working with Grinders or Grinding Machines

• Amputations
• General duty of employer to provide a workplace free of recognized hazards
• Gloves can catch on rotating equipment and pull operators hands into the equipment
• Rotation of grinding wheels is at high RPM’s
• Operator cannot get hand out of glove when it catches
• Equipment horsepower and machine material properties exceed those of the operators flesh

We did a quick calculation and a 12″ grinding wheel and 3600 rpm and arrived at a speed on the periphery of 120 miles per hour.
No time to react.
More info on preventing amputations from OSHA