Safety
 

Based on the Injuries thread, There were lots of fun stories of flying boxes, melting wires, and exploding coke cans, but also alot of stories about serious injuries as a result of breaks in safety. My favorite part of FIRST is that it is a competition of students, which leads to lots of great innovative designs, genius ways of confronting problems (such as the different grades of a part fix), and all of the wonderful experiences at competitions (what could be more fun than cramming several hundred nerds into a stadium?), but this also leads to injuries, as the machines used to build these robots are generally far beyond the skill levels of most high school students. The easiest way to fix this would be to have all of the work done by mentors with training, but not all mentors have the experience to do this and taking the manufacture of parts out of the hand students makes it into a big pinewood derby where the adults do the work and the kids watch. My father taught me lots about using power tools and the safety that accompanies their use, so I was generally the person asked to go use the band saw or milling machine.

Safety training needs to be a much larger part of FIRST, yet FIRST has enough on their hands organizing the events and appeasing rabid participants by editing the rules, so we need to take this upon our selves. With all of the accumulated knowledge of the members of this forum and the people we have met through this experience (such as machinists and mechanics who have helped us with our robots) we need to assemble a guide or at least some safety rules to propose to FIRST for all of the teams (especially rookies) to use. A simple 2hr course in machine safety along with the roookie workshops would do a world of good.

Do any of you have safety proposals or any current things you do to ensure safety on your team.

Something that my team has began doing is charging $0.25 for each time caught in the shop without safety glasses on. I'm thinking of just giving them $20 and leaving me alone :D Not really...it's a nice plan, if they stick to it.

Ya, sometimes safety goggles are a pain. A lot of times we're too concentrated on making the robot to care about them :)

For the last 4 years I have been the safety officer on my team reminding people to be safe and making them change their behavior when it is unsafe. (such as wearing no safety glasses or messing around near machinery while it is operating) Being a certified EMT I realize how easy it is for injuries to suddenly occur from small boring tasks. I agree that safety training should be a bigger part of FIRST. There are pleanty of risks involved like with any other activity. Additionally, people don't realize that not only are there numerous risks present during the build period but also at the competetions themselves. In the heat of competetion many people forget safety goggles or their hand gets caught in the chain during emergency repairs. In Florida people were forgetting to drink water and therefore they were becomming prone to heat related disorders. A little precaution and safety training goes a long way!

Be safe out there......

P.S. Are there any other EMTs on teams out there?

DuPont (our main sponsor) is very, VERY strict on safety. In the robot build area, Safety Glasses are a MUST or you will be asked to leave. While you are working, watches, rings, and other dangley things must be removed and stored in a pocket or something. When you are working with certain tools, or are in the room while someone else is working on certain tools, hearing protection must be worn. If there is a serious injury to any member of the team while on DuPont property or at any of the events, we could loose the sponsorship from DuPont, so all of the students as well as the adults take safety very seriously

At all of the events, you'll see all of the MOE folks wearing their safety glasses in the pit area. If you attended the Duel on the Delaware, we even had 'goggle guards' posted at the entrance to 'pit way'.. the area where the general public was allowed to walk by all of the team's pits and see what was going on. Everyone within a given boundary was wearing safety glasses.

DuPont's safety record is the benchmark all business strive for.
Their safety record is amazing!

We have mandatory safety training in November on a pair of Saturdays. You are required to attend one even if you're working in the PAW room.
If you don't you won't be an X-Cat. Simple as that.

Back when I was on GRT 192, we had shop training during the fall semester of school year, where the students get trained with the usage of tools, and get familiar with the surrounding inside the machine shop. In that training, there was a list of safety rules for the shop that all students have to follow. Although accidents are unavoidable, it was greatly reduced after we start doing the shop training. This is just one of those things a team learn from the past, and build into their program as they go along.

Although it would be nice to see FIRST do something about this, I fear it is going to be a long time before they can come up with anything effective about safety. Just look at the online lessons they have about building a robot. It took them so many years to finally get them out. The only thing FIRST can do for now is stress safety in the rules, and hope that FIRST teams realizes how important it is.

Most team should and do understand about safety, and do make it part of their training before 6 weeks. You should be able to ask the teams around you get a list of useful safety advice.

Also, if your team is doing some sort of rookie team workshop, then you should include safety as a big part of it. Make sure all the rookie teams coming to your workshop understand how important it is.

Warning: Another Silly Post
 

You can:
-Wrap eveyone in bubble-wrap to prevent injuries and they'll look funny too.
-Electro Shock everyone not obeying safety regulations
-Have a huge loudspeaker and say "Mr. ______ is not properly safe. You can laugh at him."
-Duct tape goggles to people's heads

Re: Warning: Another Silly Post
 

If you work on the electrical team, that happens automatically.

Matt

DuPont has always been safety conscious, they began business making explosives. Gunpowder is very unforgiving.
Eye safety is at the top of our list, not only for machine operators. A cut wire, a solder splash, any number of electrical failures or a mishandled pencil all will hurt and damage your eyes. If you are spending so much time working on this robot, insure that you will get to see it compete.
One of my favorite rules is "Don't talk to someone who is operating a machine unless (s)he is about to hurt themselves." When you are operating you should not allow yourself to be distracted by anything or anyone.