OT..Electrical safety

I listed this as OT but dont think it is..

New legislation passed up here recently (Ontario) concerning working on or around live power.

The general info is..you cannot work on live power..(No suprise!!)

However..Now before you open the door to a disconect you must be wearing a flame proof suit..with a flame proof visor and a et of gloves rated at the voltage you are working with..(BTW the gloves have to be certified every 3 months..)

There is a whole lot more to it but wont effect the controls people so much..what does effect you people is you cannot open your cabinet doors if there is 120 volt or greater..Now you can open and diagnose..but you must be in the full gear and standing on a Mat..Once you have found the problem you cannot work on it untill all power sources have been shut down..

An example for all us sparky/PLC people

A sensor gets ripped off in the field (Something fell on it or whatever) This blows the fuse in the cabinet..I don the gear..(And i look like darth vader) and open the doors..a dummy light is lit to tell me what fuse i should change..but i cannot just change that fuse..I have to shut down all power to that cabenet BEFORE i do anything..For a 15c fuse it now cost thousands in down time...

Just wondering if anyone else has run into this..

D

Here in the US, it is called NFPA 70E, electrical safe work practices. We have have to do the same with gloves, long sleeve non conductive clothing, etc just to be in a cabinet with live power to put a meter probe on something. Definitely makes for much more downtime, but as they say, "Safety First".

RANT WARNING:

I'm all in favor of safety, but at some point there is no production if you follow all the rules, and without production, we don't have jobs at all. I guess that's as safe as it gets. JMHO, but we shouldn't have to kiddie-proof factories, and it seems that's what it's coming to.

PEC

Warning labels only have meaning if people can read them, and then respect them. This makes them useless for protecting life and limb.

Many manufacturing jobs make use of unskilled temp workers. These folks are usually less than motivated, and alot of them don't speak english well, if at all. I worked for one company in Indiana that had two translators on staff, full time, and a 100% temp production workforce.

We're designing for the new, quick-change workforce. The ultimate goal is to reduce the operator to a non-thinking parts handler - a pick & place with a pulse. To make them truly interchangeable, processes must be designed to be absolutely injury-proof, since the next operator may not be interested in reading the warning stickers, or may not read english at all.

TM

There's no such thing as a free lunch...

It's a pain when working on old equipment but is not too bad once you start designing thinking "This will be my CAT 1 (<50V) controls enclosure where I can access the $.15 sensor fuse that blew without a suit, another CAT 2 cabinet (>50V shock) with the xxx:24VDC power supply and other miscellaneous controls that are not <50 V that can be accessed with minimal protection, and then the CAT 3 cabinet (>30A flash) where, even if you are careful, they may be having a wake for you and the widow gets to collect on the insurance policy because sometimes __it happens."

Education of management as to the true cost of abiding by these rules is key: work does not occur as quickly anymore. But if management pushes you to avoid the new rules and hurry up, are they willing to put themselves on trial (literally) if an accident occurs? I was originally a bit hesitant to follow these requirements but then considered: Is my life worth taking a chance to save some time so I can just do more work?

RANT Warning

I am not familiar with the Canadian rules of Arc Flash safety so this is mostly directed to the US NEC and NFPA 70E rules.

I do get so tired of the all the hoopla I hear in dealing with the new (or newly enforced) rules as they pertain to NFPA 70E. The best tool that anyone has is to get educated and to stop listening to some of these people that claim that the rules "require" the space suit approach to changing a fuse in a panel. Nowhere in the rules does it say you can't work on live equipment nor does it say that you have to be fully dressed out in cat4 flame retardant clothing.

What the rules do say is that you have to protect your employees. If you do not want to do the right thing and perform a short circuit study and a resulting arc flash study, then you can follow some simplified method as an alternative. This simplified method will incur costs and actions that go beyond the norm just to be safe. If you (or whoever) will just do the study, then most likely the results will show that the extra expense and dressing out is not needed. My experience is that if a study is done, then the results will usually show that simple cotton clothing is necessary to perform your work. The resultant energy available from a circuit failure is dependant upon the available short circuit current available. The funny thing about some companies that refuse to spend the money to do a short circuit study is how can anyone design an electrical panel WITHOUT knowing how much short circuit current is available at the feed. Most designers (engineers, techs, and bean counters) want to use the lowest cost breaker. If there is 50,000 amps available and you use a 10,000 amp breaker, then you are negligent (whether you knew it or not) and, in my opinion responsible if someone gets hurt because failed to interrupt the fault without failing. (Sorry, I am digressing into another pet peeve)

OSHA has never allowed anyone to do "hot" or "live" work without the proper protection on circuits above 50 volts. It has always been a requirement that voltage rated gloves be used if your hands can come into contact with a energized part.

I could go on and on, but there is not reason to. All I can says is to learn just what the requirements are before panicing.

The PM work order to send out the electrician's 1KV gloves (half go each 6 weeks) came up and I collected 4 pairs of tested gloves sealed in the plastic that they were returned in. Nobody asks what the heck is really going on, just keep sending them back for testing. I'm equally to blame, I know the rules and I take my chances. It'll unfortunately take somebody we know getting killed before many of us will change our attitude about working live.

Be safe,
Brian.

There are two types of electricians. Old ones and BOLD ones.

There are NO OLD BOLD ones.

Once again, the panic mongers get their panties in a wad and those of us that have to deal with real equipment get put in precarious positions. A little thought and caution goes a long was.

I fully like the lock-out tag-out system. Having to remove my metal frame Z87 approved safety glasses and wear NON prescription cheap plastic because some one says metal frames are dangerous is just not right. I would like to meet that electrician that got shocked thru his metal glasses while working in a control panel.

Does any body actually get their face that close to live electricity? I know I don't.

Again - Education! Please follow the link to the OSHA website that states the requirements for metal frame glasses. It ONLY applies when a contact hazard exists - not any time someone goes in the cabinet.

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETATIONS&p_id=21605

As a side note, I did read a safety notice (this was back in the 80's) of an electrician who was wearing metal framed glasses and during the course of work on an extremely hot day, his glasses slipped off his face and fell onto a set of terminal strips mounted in the bottom of the cabinet. This was extremely old gear and these were not finger safe terminal strips. When the glasses fell from the strip to the metal cabinet, it did short something out. Now it wasn't high voltage but imagine if that had happened on one of those bottom mount 480 VAC to 120 VAC transformers.

Another thread... http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopic=8150
It has some more info

brucechase said:

Again - Education! ...
As a side note, I did read a safety notice (this was back in the 80's) of an electrician who was wearing metal framed glasses and during the course of work on an extremely hot day, his glasses slipped off his face and fell onto a set of terminal strips mounted in the bottom of the cabinet. ...

Click to expand...

Yep, what are you going to do? I wear croakies around wire frames (been wearing them since John Lennon made them cool in '68) and if they fall off my face, I probably had a heart attack into the panel and whatever the post mortem came up with, my widow is taken care of until we meet again. (My fault for working in a live panel...)

Take the appropriate precaution, and, no matter how careful you are, we are all mortal. Hopefully your odds are better getting into a fatal car crash on the way home. Just don't become a candidate for the Darwin Awards. What's that? You aren't educated enough to avoid that? Either get educated or become a statistics. Sounds harse, but if you are working around significant potential energy (defibulators run ~50mA) and do not understand the consequences, you are waiting to lose a personal version of Russian Roulette.

Whenever anyone asks me my commitment to safety I tell them "I don't {want to meet/ or see your wife and kids again} at your wake and tell then I could have prevented this unpleasant meeting tonight."

Hence , the reason OSHA requires only working on power off panels - even Bubba should be safe. (no offense meant to any Bubba's out there, just a justification for the law.)

Having to remove my metal frame Z87 approved safety glasses and wear NON prescription cheap plastic because some one says metal frames are dangerous is just not right. I would like to meet that electrician that got shocked thru his metal glasses while working in a control panel.

Click to expand...

I've never met one either... But we received Navy wide safety bulletins back when I was in the service, on a monthly basis. You'd be amazed....

We'd see the guy who's glasses arced onto panel because he leaned in too close to look at something...
The guy who was going down a ladder, slipped, and his wedding ring got caught on a rung and cored his finger like an apple...
The guy who opened a switch and put a tag on it... And someone else stumbled fell, and hit the switch with their head while standing up....

I'm pretty sure somewhere at Osha there's probably a spot that lists all of these these country-wide, and if we had access to them it would make for some interesting reading.

Here at my plant we're coming up to date on these safety procedures as well... And in your case you'd have the option of wearing a full face-shield over your glasses and head, instead of making you put on the plastic, non-prescription glasses.

*Edit* Ohhh... I forgot the hardhat... You'd have to be wearing a hardhat too...

The guy who was going down a ladder, slipped, and his wedding ring got caught on a rung and cored his finger like an apple...

Click to expand...

At different times, I have known 3 electricans who had missing ring fingers. They all had got their gold wedding band across live terminals. Instant finger fry!

Once about 20 years ago, I was buying a part for my lawn mower at a small engine parts supply house. I noticed the guy at the counter had a bandage on his ring finger. I asked what happened, and he said, "the other day I was trying to get a part from the top shelf. Instead of getting a ladder, I climbed upon the bottom shelf. My feet slipped off, and my ring caught on the top shelf and cut the end off of my finger". Ouch!

Electricians and most others should avoid wearing rings on their fingers, or in their noses. I have never worn a ring since high school graduation, and my watch band is cheap plastic. I still have all 10 fingers and both arms.

My wife hates that I never wear my wedding ring, but not only and I working around live equipment, I also had an uncle who was a mechanic that lost his finger because of one.

And another good thread on the subject:

http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopic=6963&hl=