Thursday, August 12, 2021

"man got stuck in a (die cast) machine..."

 


Workers getting trapped in machinery is sadly a common occurrence in our industry. It occurs for a myriad of reasons. We pray that by posting this incident readers will look at their workplace machinery for similarities.

One morning during the month of July, 2021 at half past ten, the emergency services had to hurry to a work accident in Western Europe.

At an aluminum foundry, a man got stuck in a press machine. According to the fire service, his son had already freed him before the emergency services arrived. The man was taken to hospital in critical condition. He is no longer in life-threatening condition, according to police. The labor prosecutor went to the scene to investigate how the accident could have happened.

We pray that the worker recovers fully from his injuries. Sadly, we are too accustomed to similar incidents that involve fatalities or amputations. We also pray that the injured worker’s son is provided with mental health counseling. We can only imagine the horror the son saw when his father was trapped in a die casting machine.

We have reported on numerous incidents involving die casting machines. In most cases the safety mechanisms do not work or were disabled. What commonly happens is an operator will disable or jam the safety mechanism to save seconds prior to the next cast. The operator gets away with it and thinks that the safety mechanisms are useless. Then eventually the operator is slower and gets caught in the machine. What happens is the operator either dies, gets injected with molten metal, or gets stuck. All options are horrible. Please never, ever disable any safety mechanism on any machinery.

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