Safety

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Purpose Of This Module

You must recognize that safety is good business. Preventing injuries protects employees. Preventing damage to equipment protects profits.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

You will learn how to protect yourself, fellow workers, and the equipment you work on. You will learn: Safe laboratory practice and safety in field repairs. How to protect the equipment you work on from damage from electrical discharge, physical shock, and other dangerous accidents. How to protect yourself and others from personal injury. Safe storage practices. 

BACKGROUND & DISCUSSION

Safety cannot be overemphasized. OSHA, WSHA, local governments, and company policy mandate safe practice. 

INSTRUCTIONS:

Create a safety manual for the lab. {Seminars--Discussions}

EVALUATION CRITERIA:

You will be evaluated as a group on how comprehensive and livable your safety rules are. Pass-fail!

The completion report processor is Under construction

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Background & Discussion ------ Some help in getting started. Why is this important?

Safety

Safety is good business.

Preventing injuries protects employees.

Preventing damage to equipment protects profits.

Safety is not just the responsibility of the lab safety coordinator, it is everyone's job. You don't have the time to spend in the hospital or emergency room. The loss of a finger or your life could ruin your whole day. Seriously, personal injury costs time, money and pain. It must be avoided if possible. Government agencies have extensive safety regulations which can be used as a starting point for defining safety rules for your laboratory. Just because OSHA doesn't forbid something, though, doesn't make it safe. It is important for your lab to establish definite, reasonable, safety rules

The cost of injuries just begins with lost time and unmet comitments. One personal accident could wipe out your company's insurance coverage and double your insurance costs. If negligence is shown in the incident your and your company's liability can easily exceed your entire net worth and that of the whole company.

If you damage a $5000 computer on a $150 repair job it may take quite a few additional succesful jobs to make up the loss. You have one asset that outweighs all the fancy equipment and corporate furniture: your reputation. To succeed, your clients will have to trust you and your expertise. Errors, accidents, and misunderstandings can undermine your good reputation.

It is worth the effort to assure safety, to avoid accidents, and to obey safety rules. 

This discussion merely defines important aspects of safety. You will be expected to find and formulate the kind of rules that protect your health and avoid faults.

Personal safety considerations:

  • Whenever working around electricity:
    • Kill the power and unplug before opening any equipment.
    • Do not touch anything that COULD be hot electrically.
    • A CRT retains a potentially lethal charge even after being turned off.
    • Don't turn anything on unless it is assembled into its proper configuration.
    • Don't turn the power supply on unless it's plugged into a mother board or appropriate dummy load.
    • Always ground your equipment properly.


      • Use test equipment properly.

    • Use only one hand if possible. Don't get across a live circuit.
    • Don't count on protective devices.
      • Isolation tranformers may be faulty.
      • Faulty low voltage power supplies may eroneously feed 110 VAC.
      • Interlocks may be faulty or may have been overridden.
      • Ground fault islolation testers may be inoperative.
      • A dangling test equipment ground may get into hot circuitry.
      Cable or card connectors may vibrate loose and make unreliable contact. 
      Heavy weights: Once injured, a person's back is never the same. A thoughtless moment can precipitate a lifelong disability. Be very careful of lifting anything. As little as 20 pounds held wrong, can injure your back.

      Lift with your legs, holding your back almost vertical with any weight. One perceptive safety coordinator pointed out the proper stance. Lift as if you are wearing a very short miniskirt. Hold heavy weights close to your body.

      Computers are heavy enough to hurt you. Besides, they tend to be awkwardly shaped with lots of cables hanging here and there to catch on everything. Use a wheel-cart rather than carrying. Clear all the cables first then lift resolutely from the bench and place the computer on the wheel cart. Don't twist your back to move the computer around, shuffle your feet. You might try for hours to lasoo a cabinet knob with a cable on purpose. But it will happen every time when you don't want to. Be careful. Disconnect the cables before moving equipment.

      Storage shelves can't hurt you can they? Haven't you snagged a cable on a shelf before. Anything stored on a shelf is safe isn't it? Suppose it's above your head and someone accidentally bumps the shelving. Even a light keyboard can injure you if it falls. And if it falls you can't send it back to the customer, you'll have to eat its cost.

      Your workbench isn't close to the power outlet? Just run an extension cord under the rubber mat. Sure... wrong in two ways. Never run a workbench on an extension cord. A cord under the mat or rug will wear and short out eventually. Oh, and what will happen when you trip over it?

      Even little things can cause problems. You don't need a tie clip, do you?" What if it gets caught in a motor? Those pens and screwdrivers in your shirt pocket? Will it help if they fall into a running computer when you bend over?

      Shuffle across a carpet and reach for the video card on a computer... ZAP. 10,000 volts of static charge will cream the video card, memory and who knows what else. Always ground yourself before touching a computer. And make sure the computer is properly grounded. Speaking of grounding, do you have a power cable with the ground pin cut off so it can run from a two prong plug? Get rid of it and use an approved adaptor. Better yet, get the two-prong wall socket replaced with a properly grounded three-prong receptacle.

      Those funny colored plastic bags that cards come in are important. They are conductive to assure that no local electrical charges build up on the card. Wear a grounding bracelet when you open the bag and install the card. By the way, don't leave those bags lying around. If you set a hot computer on the bench and a conductive bag makes contact with the bottom of the electronics.... Zap again. And you have to eat the cost of the motherboard. 

      All kinds of things can grab you. Open cabinet doors. Lean down to pick up a dropped screw. Look around to find it. Then stand up and.... Pow, right in the back of the head. By the way, keep a divided box on your bench to hold those screws and always work over a pad to keep from losing the screws in the first place.

      How about standing behind the door looking through a box on the shelf. Someone comes in from the outside and ... Pow again. Allow for that sort of thing in setting up your shop.

      Safety is everyone's job and for everyone's benefit

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    Exercise Description -------- Procedures for completing this exercise

    Create a safety manual for the lab. {Seminars--Discussions} Working as a class, have one or two students contact OSHA, WSHA, and other agencies to obtain safety regulations. Then extract from these regulations a set of rules that apply to our lab and to field repairs. Adapt the rules as necessary. Add 'common sense' rules as appropriate. If a rule seems ridiculous or unnecessary, find out why it's there. Do whatever research is necessary to compile a safety manual to be used for the rest of the year. Participate in two safety seminars. The first, at the beginning of the quarter will discuss general safety issues. The second, halfway through will discuss the rules you have created. 

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    Evaluation Criteria

    You will be evaluated as a group on how comprehensive and livable your safety rules are. Pass-fail! You will also be evaluated on how well prepared you were for the seminars. Each group will turn in its safety manual at the end of the quarter!  It must be comprehensible and comprehensive!

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