Our team is required to submit a safety plan to our activities director before we start any in-person meetings. I know there is a separate thread related to the FRC Blog that deals with the safety plan, but I feel that thread may have gotten a little derailed. Please help us make our own safety plan by sharing what your team has come up with so far. I understand “local guidance” will have a huge impact, but I’m still interested in hearing everyone out.
2 Likes
Ours is no meetings.
18 Likes
@Jon_Stratis, yours might help out better than my team’s…
For what it’s worth, my team is doing everything remotely (Zoom and Onshape) until further notice, courtesy of the local school district’s guidance. We’ve discussed dropping off (or having picked up) “work packets” when we do start working on hardware, and working offsite in open garages or similar in small groups. But we don’t have an actual written plan yet.
Ours:
Since your a local team here… we’ve been working on assembling some resources to help teams (specifically in the FUM area, but others may find it useful as well). I expect we’ll have it up in another day or two on the FUM website - I’ll be sure to link it here when it’s ready, and it should be included in one of the regional email blasts from Mark as well.
2 Likes
Thanks Peter for starting this thread.
4607 is NOT meeting until after Minnesota’s MEA break (Fall Break - 10/22 through 10/25). So our first team meeting since the quarantine in March will be nearly 8mos since we last met. This is by far and away the longest I have not been fully engaged since I started back in 2012!
I will post the entirety of our COVID19 plans closer to these dates. We have been working with our administration to ensure we are working within all of the recommendations with our school and state mandates.
On a similar note - anyone find a good place to purchase masks? We are working with BSN and now should have enough masks for our entire team including mentors for $6 per mask.
Here are some good guidelines, as well as links to program-specific policies.
https://www.firstindianarobotics.org/covid-safety-practices/
How are you all handling the safety of face masks in the machine shop? We haven’t officially gotten the go ahead for small meetings yet but our fab director is concerned about students wearing face masks while using power tools, mill, lathe, etc.
What is the concern regarding? If your face mask is interfering with using a machine tool, your face is way way way way too close to the machine. I hope entanglement isn’t the concern.
If it has to do with safety glasses fogging, that’s been addressed a few times as a good indicator that your mask doesn’t fit right and isn’t working anyway.
Outside of that what is the concern?
1 Like
I think his concern might be entanglement and I don’t think that should be a concern since dust masks are really commonly used with all kinds of tools. I mostly wanted to get a sanity check, so thanks!
I don’t see what the concern is. Like all clothing worn in the shop, any loose or dangling material (such as hoodie strings, or in this case the ends of mask strings, for those that tie in the back) need to be properly contained. I should note that this was directly addressed by our safety captain at our first meeting of the fall, calling out face mask strings alongside hoodie or sweatpants strings!
A mask, by itself, shouldn’t be a problem. Putting your face close enough to machinery to make it a problem is itself a danger.
If the question is fogging safety glasses, we got some anti-fogging spray, which seems to work just fine, if your face mask leaks a little.
No worries, I realized just how many times I wrote the word concern and it kind of came off sounding different than I wanted it too. I just worked in our shop for an hour wearing my mask and was totally comfortable, no fogging and no loose straps for entanglement. As long as it’s a tight well fitting facemask they should have no issues. I used a table saw, radial arm saw, drill press, disc sander, and manual mill in that time.
Anti-fog spray is magical too.
I will admit that by the time I was done, my lips felt sweaty so I stepped outside for a minute to take a breather.
I totally get it! Personally, I’m pretty much always wearing an N95 any time I’m in any shop because I’m super sensitive to dust and smells but this is a new school for me and I wanted to be sure that I was being reasonable. Thanks!
Our page is up and can be found here:
We’re still working on gathering local team’s safety plans to have a more complete list, so check back later if you’re looking for more examples!
1 Like
The Compass Alliance has put together a step-by-step guide to creating a return to lab safety plan, including examples from FRC 971 and FRC 1678. Here is the link: https://www.thecompassalliance.org/post/return-to-lab-template?fbclid=IwAR10LwS_xzml1fkETU1Cm4fMnSAe4v_IqCndwhBwlvEuKHYtp_X146pse-M
2 Likes
We have developed a plan which has the approval of our administration for such time as we return to in-person learning, which was postponed again yesterday for at least four more weeks. What is not in this document is the makeup of each cohort. We have collected data from all our students on their class schedules and who they may see outside of school activities, and so have organized the cohorts so that we can keep continuity between students who have classes together. That data is on a Google spreadsheet which the students filled out, and is easy enough to make.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.