Sometimes for maintenance, sometimes because manual intervention was necessary. The machines where we did this were built in the 90s and have been in near constant operation. Moving parts are worn out and the tolerances are gone. Replacement parts are difficult to find and expensive to manufacture, so if something more complex than a ball bearing or axle got out of alignment, we had to pound it back into place (sometimes literally).
I personally never bypassed the interlock, I wasn’t paid enough to take on that responsibility. I would just file a downtime notice and call the on-site mechanic when needed. I didn’t give a shit about reduced output.
Not the original post, but it’s usually speed. Manufacturing employees get pushed for more output, and usually that means that maintenance gets rushed.
A decade ago I was working somewhere with massive production machines with big rollers to pull the product through. One guy left the machine running to clean it so he could just sort of buff the rollers to clean them instead of scrubbing.
He got his arm sucked in up to his shoulder before someone was able to hit the e-stop
We used to routinely disable safety interlocks on production machines. A guy almost got decapitated once while performing maintenance.
What? Why? It only takes one guy to refuse.
Sometimes for maintenance, sometimes because manual intervention was necessary. The machines where we did this were built in the 90s and have been in near constant operation. Moving parts are worn out and the tolerances are gone. Replacement parts are difficult to find and expensive to manufacture, so if something more complex than a ball bearing or axle got out of alignment, we had to pound it back into place (sometimes literally).
I personally never bypassed the interlock, I wasn’t paid enough to take on that responsibility. I would just file a downtime notice and call the on-site mechanic when needed. I didn’t give a shit about reduced output.
Tagging @[email protected]
Not the original post, but it’s usually speed. Manufacturing employees get pushed for more output, and usually that means that maintenance gets rushed.
A decade ago I was working somewhere with massive production machines with big rollers to pull the product through. One guy left the machine running to clean it so he could just sort of buff the rollers to clean them instead of scrubbing.
He got his arm sucked in up to his shoulder before someone was able to hit the e-stop