I've learned to assume I'm using a machine that was just crashed. Bring everything to safe location before powering on. When powering on, have estop ready to be pressed.
Lathes are one of the few shop tools that legitimately terrify me. It's strange though because Mills don't even though they are basically a lathes horizontally challenged cousin.
Buffing wheels scare the crap out of me. Why? Cause they seem so innocent but are one of the most dangerous tools in the shop, partially because people dont give them the respect they need. The primary reason they are so dangerous is because they are usually located a foot or two in front of a wall. They can grab your workpiece, and when they do it will fling it up. When located where they usually are, the workpiece can bounce off the wall, then ceiling, then straight back down at the same angle, right into your head. They are actually incredibly dangerous when not treated with respect. Worse rhan a grinding wheel for sure.
@@RealHankShillor those angle grinders with 9" discs... Like, sure, I don't have a handle, nor shield on my common 5", and I know I'm going to ER if the blade fails.. But people that uses battery powered 9" without the shield and modified safety switch, and uses them as a normal grinder... Man... I've seen a corded machine get stuck in the material, fling the machine out of the persons hand and back until it hits something, and the blade jumps out.. and all of a sudden you got a killing bayblade until it cuts the cord or something pulls the plug. If the battery powered one with a modified safety, so it's like a corded that holds the on position... Holy... Cause the torque they got is crazy.. I'd literally leave the area 😂
@@EliasH96my father's workplace banned discs less than 1mm on all grinders, and mandated that all grinders must have an enclosed guard after an incident where one such disc separated from the steel reinforcement ring at the centre, happily popping out of the open side of the guard, hit the ground, raced a few meters (roughly a few feet times 3) across the floor, where it encountered another worker's foot and promptly ran up his leg, ultimately leaving him with a nasty gash on his cheek. no one died, but that was the end of those wheels, and the end of open guards. they also completely banned Stanley knives for everyone, site-wide after a sparks wasn't being cautious enough and cut his thumb open. they also also had (at one point in time) allowed the safety stop string that would stop the conveyor belts should someone fall onto the line be temporarily replaced with braided steel cables. That's right, the ropes meant to be easily grabable to stop the giant pulverisers from giant pulverising you were replaced with possibly *the* hardest thing to get a stable grip on if you have so much as a molecule of water or oil on your hands
We had a shop teacher who'd show us the dangers of leaving the chuck key in his lathe, he'd turn it on and wothout fail would throw it into the back corner of the class room (going over every student's head and into a cardboard box he had up there)
Mad respect for the time spent figuring out which gearing to start on and where to position it to get it to consistently land in the box. That's an afternoon well spent. -Cameraman
I’m a welder and I work with a ton of machinists, every time I walk into their area those machines scare the hell out of me, those dudes have balls of steel to be working around machines that can turn you to butter. I tip my hood for all machinists.
I'm a journeyman machinist who's played around with mig and stick. It takes balls to hold that much electrical potential in your hands, let alone make a puddle of liquid iron look pretty. Anyway, as long as you treat any mill or lathe like a loaded gun, you'll be fine. Know all the variables, know all the modes of failure, check them, and then send it.
We tip our hats to you as well, you weird little magic wand wielders. Stickin' metal together like it's easy. That's the literal opposite of my job, Idk how to do that!
A spring for the clutch or for the chuck key? Spring loaded chuck keys arent new and most chucks today come with that crap. A spring for the clutch would be pointless, you would have to hold down the lever all the time.
@@wolf310ii Thanks, this is almost 40 years ago so I dont know the details, but I think it was the thing you hold in your hand (chuck?), as I was a kid and we were new immigrants, and his inventions or idea made him some (minor) money here in Sweden as some companies liked the idea. Maybe not new but he got something out of it. He was badly tortured in Iran and in bad health both physically and mentally, so I just remember my father, before passing, was happy for him.
When my dad was in highschool machine shop, a girl left the chuck key in when she turned on the lathe, and of course it went flying across the room. The shop teacher grabbed the key, opened the shop garage door, chucked it into the field behind the building, and told the girl she couldn't come back to class until she found it.
Teacher I had would yell like a drill sergeant. Never had someone in my class turn the lathe on with the key in the chuck, but we would get put on blast if we even took our hand off the key while it was in. It was always funny seeing him chuck the key across the shop and yell at the student as they ran to go grab it
The lathe I learned to turn on was from the 80‘s and it had a built in switch, that would not allow you to turn on the motor without disengaging the clutch first.
There was a lathe key stuck in the wall near the ceiling in the machine shop at the college in my hometown. I cant remember exactly what happened since it happened years before I went there, but they left it up there as a teaching point..pretty sure it's still up there to this day
My grandad was a toolmaker for Rolls Royce and had a massive workshop with a few different machines... he always said "dont touch ANYTHING unless you know exactly what your doing"...
I remember machine shop in HS and multiple people leaving the chuck in and starting it throwing the chuck at Mach 5 across the room. The teacher would flip out and rightly so.
Never owned a metal lathe. Never used one.. been hunting for one. Your videos, as duh you gotta be alert snd non complacent as they are, are very helpful. I didnt know they had a clutch .
Most don’t. Between tech school and the manufacturing plant I’m currently in, none of the manual machines I’ve come across have clutches that can be disengaged like this.
most new machines do not have or need clutches. they have enough power to start the motor without all the extra complexity. my 15x48 is from the 60s and it dont have a clutch. another note is the old 3 phase machines are usually more fair priced. dont be aftaid of one as long as its the correct voltage you can install a phase converter or vfd. i use a phase converter and it works great.
@MrChevelle83 you can use a single phase motor and use a reversing switch. Most motors i have seen if you change #5 and #8 it reverses the direction. That os what i did on ours. It was set up for a line belt in a factory. A 1898 model.
@@MikeSchmitt-y7p theres several ways to get these old machines going, i was just telling the way I did it. im no electrician by any means, i just follow the instructions.
That lathe is beautiful! I learned on a 1940s lathe from germany, the best and most precise i have ever worked on. Its incredible how good these old maschines are
In High School, our teacher had made a safety switch that required you to physically insert the key into a holder in order to provide power to the motor.
In shop class in school. After hours we had a great teacher teach us how to use the lathe. Before we were allowed to touch it. He showed us a powerpoint of lathe accidents. It had scalped people, missing fingers, arms ripped from their sockets.. I still remember it 15 years later. It was brutal! I think there was a dent in the wall from someone leaving the key in, and turning it on. According to the teacher, the key flew over the guy's shoulder.
When I first started machining I left the key in the chuck, got distracted, and turned it on. Thankfully, it flew out early in the rotation and missed me. That neverrrrr happened again! 😬 I later managed that shop. 😂👍
I might not be a machinist, but I worked on aircraft ejection seats for 7 years. The safety principles involved with aircraft and explosives maintenance are on par with this level of machinery safety, and I love that youtube is a perfect platform for simple examples of actions that could save someone's life - and I thank you for creating these shorts.
I had a really decent shop teacher in high school that taught basic metals, advanced metals, machining, and woodworks. He was one of the best teachers I ever had and he absolutely did not allow any sort of horse playing in his shop. He made sure that everybody very clearly understood that the machines and equipment that we were running were easily capable of taking somebody's life in the blink of an eye. In fact, he made everybody in the beginning, watch a 20 minute video of nothing but the most graphic lathe accidents you've ever seen. Like literally some of the most horrific stuff you can possibly think that could happen. I'll never forget the day somebody left the chuck key attached to the lathe and when it turned on it whipped that dang thing across the shop, smacking one of the welding booths just feet from him. Even though I wasn't the one at fault and I was on very good terms with him I was immediately terrified and did not want to look him in the eyes for the next 20 minutes 😂.
I think the importance of this could be understated, we were not taught in high school machine shop to have the machine in nuetral but I did learn, as I did more work over the lathe I learned it was more efficient to leave the machine on, and utilize it to make adjustments and swap parts while doing batches.
This can often be an issue as those who don't need to be pushed to learn are given mentors that don't bother and those who don't want to bother are given mentors that push too hard. Thus noones happy and you can lose all your apprentices... seeing it happen where I am right now. We lost all our good ones because they saw no development so we're left with those who barely know which end of a pencil to use
@@wildin13 Here’s the thing. A lot of times the supposed mentors/trainers are afraid to teach too much. They are afraid the younger guys will take their spot. Sometimes that is valid. Sometimes it’s just garbage and the experienced guy need to move on.
@Iwillnotbepushed I know, some people (both employees and employers) like to skill limit. Either for pay reasons or to keep certain people in a certain role or like you said, afraid to lose the top spot. I always teach myself and others to only strive to be better than yourself. We're in it together, we look after eachother and help eachother. We are then worth more both as a team and individuals.
As an engineer, freshman year..we had a machinists class with lathes. Friggen terrifying. I couldnt wait to get the hell out of there. I could not believe they threw us the keys to a killing maching at 18yrs old with nearly no safety training. Made a cool machinists hammer though. Gave it to my father.
It doesn’t need to be a huge industrial lathe to be dangerous. I saw a newsagent cleaning jammed plastic out of the rollers in a paper wrapping machine. A device that manually rolls one paper at a time. To clean it, you turn off a small switch on the front, and insert a hex head T-shaped wrench into the side so you can manually turn the mechanism to pull the plastic out. Absentmindedly, the person turned the switch back on once cleaned out, without removing the wrench. No one saw it move, but just heard the thud of it hitting the table nest to the machine, and the second thud immediately after as it embedded the handle of the wrench into a drywall six feet away. I’ve done the chuck key mistake decades ago at high school, on both metal and wood lathes. I’ve done it with a bench drill. I almost broke my hand when I left a power drill plugged in and tried to tighten the chuck with the key, accidentally pressing the button in the process. Damn, I’ve even sent the chuck key on a Dremel grinder through a soda bottle, because I didn’t take the battery out first. It is so easy to do, and it doesn’t need to be an industrial machine to seriously injure yourself or someone else.
Tried to tell my coworkers not to wear gloves or leave the chuck key in. Neither one listened. 12 years experience doesn't give you the right to be complacent. It doesn't help that i'm the new guy. "Im working right here and using the chuck key, i wont forget it" "I've used gloves for years and i havent had a problem" Those were almost the exact responses i got.
There is a video of a poor Russian lad who was decimated by a large lathe. Just cant stress the dangers of these machines. Even experienced people make it wrong. I have found a calm slow pace in a shop is best. I can shift when I have too but slow and steady. My little lathe is belt driven and is very forgiving. Great advice here.
I've forgotten about the chuck key only one time in my life. It was the second time I used the lathe, I was 16 at the time. Lucky for me I was out of the way and it threw it directly on the ground upon switching spindle on. Haven't repeated that mistake ever since. I also made a habit of pulling chuck keys from other peoples' machines any time I see one in the chuck unattended, because I saw these keys fly through the entire shop way too many times. Machine tools are great and I love them, but it can not be understated how dangerous they can be even with a single, slightest mistake.
The very first thing our engineering teacher told us as we gathered around a lathe back at our secondary technical school was 'always remove your chuck key'. I didn't and it flew out and smashed the overhead lamp above the lathe.
We had lathes, milling machines, welders, casting and molten aluminum, table saws ,drill press in the 70s 80s high school...I would probably be shocked if I went into a highschool in 2024
Prior to energizing any piece of equipment, it’s wise to know the state of all the switches and what will be moving or releasing energy once being energized.
The first 2 things I was told in engineering in collage was never ever leave the key in the chuck and always roll your sleeves up before going near a machine
Man, these lathes are like magical beasts! 🦄 I get kinda nervous around them too, but they're so cool to watch in action. Makes me wanna learn some machining skills! 🤔✌️
A switch that disables the machine when the chuck key isn’t at its place would be cool. We actually learned that we‘re not allowed to let the hands off the key unless it’s at its storage location. Back to filing steel if we were caught forgetting that
I learned the hard way what happens when you leave the chuck key in the chuck. Unfortunately, it was my best friend who needed the lesson. He's the one who left it in there and turned it on.
We had an radial drilling machine that wouldnt even turn on with anything not in neutral. So anytime the apprentice did go to lunch break without shutting the machine off, i did it for him, emergency stop, autofeed on, spindel on and main switch off. After the break he tried to turn the motor on by pressing the green button, nothing happend, so he came to me "the machine is broken", so i let him run back und forth for every single step. Over time he learned to do the all the steps to make the machine start again by himself, but he never learned to shut the machine off for lunch break.
A kid in my machine tool class in HS got a Chuck key stuck in the ceiling by doing exactly what this man says not to do. Teacher didn’t notice so everyone left it there for like 2 weeks until the teacher was doing an inventory and found 1 key missing. He asked me-the responsible student-and I just looked up and told him I had no idea where it was😂
Working in warehouses this can save lives some people just like to push buttons first ask questions later well let me tell you that’s how people die always assume something is broken first inspect the machine make sure everything is 100% then start
A wise man once said, "Look boy at this workshop. In it are some very dangerous tools! The table saw might chop some fingers off, the band saw might take your hand, but don't let that big lathe fool you... It's the only thing in this whole shop that will probably kill you."
Yeah he is very right! The Lathe maschine is really no joke, i saw a photo where a guy (at leadt that was has left of him) was mashed to pieces like meat in a grinder because he wasn't paying attation to the wheel and that wheel catched him for he sleeve and next you can just imagine what happend.
Yup, left a screwdriver right next to a motor once, switched it on and sent the screwdriver across the classroom/workshop. Luckily it was just me and the teacher there. Went between us
In the workshop at a place I used to work, one guy had such form for starting the lathe with the chuck key still in the chuck that the other machinists would automatically duck behind their machines when they saw him reach for the start button.
Neglect in turning off a lathe cost me some of my hair, a portion of my scalp, 1/3 of fhs outside of my ear, and fractured a C2 vertibrae. I learned a hard lesson because i wasn't paying attention
The moral of the story is ... Don't touch the machine unless you are familiar with it. Because it has a chuck key as a surprise to stop people that don't know
I once threw a chuck key this way across the shop at the boss as a high school intern. I never got the job. Someone left the chuck key in the machine. Lots of force.
When I was 16 in shop class, I left the key in the chuck... Shop teacher took it off and whipped it at the metal backing of the lathe, scared the shit out of me but I guess he was trying to tell me not to leave it in there... 20 minutes later I found out why, after the chuck key hit my facemask so hard my ears were ringing 😂 did exactly what you said in the video, activated full speed with key in. Not fun!
I've left the key in the chuck and accidentally turned on the machine exactly twice in my life. Both times I had a new found respect for life afterwards. Its not really as dangerous as it sounds because most of the time actually nothing really happens and everything is fine, but the potential for bad things is no joke and it can go astronomically bad if you're unlucky. First time I was using a small chuck with a very small and light weight key, it flew at high speed and I caught it with my chest, no real injury or discomfort as it didnt have much inertia and it failed to accumulate a lot of speed, so it was mostly just embarrassing and startling. Second time was with a very big chuck and correspondingly big key that was not light. Thankfully that time it fell almost straight down as I had the key in the position of shortest travel (so the chuck was spinning towards me from the top and the key was basically parallel to the floor towards me) and it basically immediately disengaged. If that had gotten going it would have probably broken me. Actually the closest thing I've had to a real accident on a lathe was when I was parting sections of a pipe or a cylinder blank (cant remember which) and one failed to disengage cleanly and whipped around towards my face. Flew right below my eye and gave me a hefty smack right on my cheekbone. Thankfully no injuries, I think I might have had a minor bruise but it wasnt visible, it just sort of felt bruised. Still it was a couple of pounds of metal flying with a good deal of force towards one of the worst locations imaginable. Needless to say I walked on eggshells around that machine for the rest of the week lol
I wish we had this when I was young, so many cool trades I never knew new about as a kid, that kids now days have access to so keep making cool stuff like this
I remember a STEM teacher going over the different tools of the lab (saws and such) and I remember him saying somethung like "all these machines will maim you, but this one will put you in the ground"
Safety first ! You are correct. Had someone almost kill me with a chuck key befor! Dont touch the lathe If you dont know what your doing it will kill you.
The solution I saw in a HAAS video is to have a spring on the chuck wrench. When the wrench is not pushed in, it is forced out. In trade school, I was reminded once not to leave the wrench in the chuck. I think that was the only time I was seen to make that mistake. I want to claim that it is the only time I did that, but I don't know for sure.
Understand, be wary, and respect anything that spins. You are NOT stronger than the machine. We have a large radial arm drill in the shop and in the early 90's it turned a man's entire arm into rope before ripping it clean off. He was lucky to survive.
A friend of mine actually did turn it on with the key in and it bend the protective steel cover and gave a hell of a shock, luckily nothing happend exept endless humiliation on his part and a leson to us all.
Smart. I personally drive my car with my hand on the key. Same logic. Doesn't work as well, but then the danger to forgetting my keys isn't as serious there.
@MDuarte-vp7bm different logic, the key starts the car, the chuck key simply moves the jaws. If you have the chuck key in the chuck keep your hand on it, you won't forget it, or you will seek future employment as a one handed man.
@BoysInTheWoodsofPA You ain't joking. I used to keep the key to a drill attached to the cord by a lanyard. One time I left the key in the chuck, and the lanyard quickly got boa constrictor'd over my hand and wrist. Only stopped cuz the cord got disconnected. I started just putting the key away immediately out of habit.
I’m a learned “turner” if you can call it this and I loved working on this old machines and maintaining them. It was really fun but it still gives me anxiety seeing you put that loosening key in the machine🤣
Yeah, we didn't have a clutch, we had on and off and two leavers with pre-set speeds, none of them were zero. The first rules we got was no free hanging long hair and wear proper clothing except coats which were considered dangerous. The sad part about that one is that teachers often did wear coats instead of the mandatory overalls so they could come and go out of the workshop more efficiently. ...this habit eventually killed one of my teachers, the most talented one at that.
Lathe vids always remind me of that lathe accident vid with the track You spin me right round, baby right round, like a record baby right round, round round.
Complacency kills. I've been there. I've tried using tools that I had no business using because I was too proud to ask for help. I've caught things other people had left and had a heart attack as my hand hovered over the power button, how could I be so stupid?! People look at me like I'm an idiot when I do a verbal, visual, and physical sweep over every part of a machine before firing it up. I've seen people get their hands sucked into drill presses because they had gloves on. Luckily it tore the glove off before their arm turned into spaghetti. Every tool in a shop is trying to maim or kill you. As I grew older, I ditched that attitude and had some great people in the shops who guided me through the safe operation which led me to teaching newcomers and recognizing when they were about to make a grave mistake. Never get complacent, always ask if you're unsure.
I took a bunch of metal working classes in high school and at least twice a semester I would just hear a loud crash bc some kid left the key in the chuck, super dangerous for sure, shocked no one got hurt by it
