Two safety precautions that should be taken in sheet metal fabrication facilities
There are certain precautions that must be taken in custom sheet metal fabrication facilities to ensure that the people who work in these places do not get hurt. Here are two such precautions.
Provide employees with cut-resistant gloves if they need to manually customise the sheet metal
Most of the sheet metal products made in this type of facility are cut using laser machines, which are programmed to cut the metal in a specified way. However, if a facility offers custom sheet metal fabrication services, some of its employees may perform the customisation work by hand, using a collection of manually operated tools, such as cutting shears and metal guillotines.
In this situation, it is extremely important for those who manage the facility to ensure that these employees are provided with gloves which are cut-resistant. Gloves of this kind are usually quite thin (to ensure that they don't affect the wearer's manual dexterity) but are coated in a special material which will not break apart very easily, even when it is struck with an extremely sharp tool.
It is crucial for those who have been tasked with manually creating customised sheet metal pieces to wear these, as the risk of them sustaining an injury will be much higher when they are doing this work by hand (rather than with a laser).
This is because there is a lot more opportunity for human error to interfere with the cutting process when it is done manually. If the person carrying out this work gets distracted for even a second (by something their colleague has said or by the noise made by a nearby machine), they could accidentally direct the blade towards one of their own hands and injure themselves (if they are not wearing the right type of gloves).
Place fire extinguishers close to each of the laser cutting machines
As mentioned above, sheet metal fabrication facilities frequently cut their metal with laser cutting machines. Whilst these machines can certainly reduce the risk of employees being injured during the cutting process, they can also be a fire hazard. This is because these machines are extremely powerful (and so generate a lot of heat) and because the laser beams that they produce can easily burn through even very robust materials. As such, if this type of equipment malfunctions, it could easily create a major fire in a matter of minutes.
As such, it is crucial for those who manage a facility like this to place multiple fire extinguishers around each of the laser cutting machines and to check the condition of these extinguishers regularly (to ensure that they are always fully functional).