Health and Safety advice

Dear All,

I work at an art college, which miraculously
granted the space and a budget
a 'RepRap' area. Triggered by
my interest and is set up as an alternative
to traditional fabrication areas
To get the go ahead I have to have a proposal
all aspects of health and safety covered

The area is in a windowless basement (surprise!)
room but may have access to vents and we would
put in all safety features
Does anyone have experience of dealing with these procedures
I would be really grateful for any advice on RepRap H&S!

If this gets created it would be possible to invite
People from the Reprap community and maybe host
a maker group

Thanks
Simon

Hi Simon,

it's a good idea to vent the room while printing, as hot plastics (especially ABS and the glue of tapes used as cover of heated beds) emit some vapours that could be harmfull over long time exposure.

With PLA this is no real problem though, but every chance to overheat or burn plastics should be avoided ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Thanks for the reply Viktor thats good to know

I support an area that has a 3d fab lab at a university. The room is maybe 500 square feet in size. Along with a reprap, it has a couple of laser cutters, a BfB 3000, a 3d powder printer, and a 3d resin printer. I set up its air system for an exhuast of 1250 CFM at 6" static and a supply air of 1000 CFM. Most of that exhaust air is for the laser cutters, but I stuck a couple of snorkles near the other equipment as well to handle smells. The design is a little stronger than it needs to be, but when someone messes up and overheats plastic (or lights it on fire) the room clears of smoke and smell in under a minute.

We looked at doing an "in room" carbon filter air cleaner, but ultimately decided not to use that because eventually the filter would end up not being changed and then it would be useless.

When you decide to plan out your exhaust air system talk to the group at your college that handles chemical fume hoods or welding area hoods. They will be able to plan your system better than the HVAC people. Definitely include any health and environmental safety group in the discussion, they will probably already know what needs to be done and who to contact to get it done - and they are usually nicer when helping with a design than when come screaming at you for an improper design and shut you down.

Even though they say PLA is safe, we've had a couple students with asthma that reacted to the fumes (thus the snorkles). No serious asthma attacks yet, and the affected students were essentially standing directly over the equipment getting a facefull of fumes. ABS obviously needs to be vented and depending on local regulations the air may need to be scrubbed before venting.

Thanks Criswilson10

thats really useful and I can talk to my H&S guy about the vents

I've been asked to look at it from the worst case scenario -preventing electric shocks, burns etc
in event of water leaks wet floors etc

Does your lab allow student direct access to the equipment
or are staff the only operators?

best wishes
simon

We let the students have direct access to the equipment so that they can learn to use it (with the exception that pregnant women are not allowed to use the 3d resin printer because of the mutagenic dangers of the resin - it's a low risk, but one we're not willing to take). We do keep a work study student (cheap labor) in the lab area during its open hours to handle problems and questions - their primary responsibility is to stop things before smoke or fumes get to a high enough level to set off the smoke/fume detectors.

My worst case scenario is usually to design around someone who is deaf, blind, on oxygen, and in a wheelchair. How do I keep them or their service animal from being overcome with fumes? How do I ensure they can get out in case of a fire? How do I make sure they don't get electrocuted if a watermain floods the room? How do I arrange the room so they can move around the room and use the equipment? How do I let them know there is a problem?

Putting power outlets in the wall at least 16 inches above the floor will clear you of the water issues. Not using extension cords will clear you of some of the tripping hazards and stuck wheelchair issues. Putting the electronics into a case so that no connectors are exposed to touch will prevent the shock hazards and blown electronics. Put all of the exposed wires from the electronics to the motors and sensors into cable sleeves as well. Label the dangers with signs on the wall near the equipment- like Reprap hot end will burn you, don't touch it. (I need that sign myself considering how many times I've burned my fingers :-) )

Most likely your college could care less whether someone gets hurt, they just don't want to get sued for damages. So make sure Health and Safety clears you, and Disability Services clears you, and put up proper warnings so the legal deparment will be happy.

I was thinking that if all you have is a single reprap you could probably get away with a little 800 CFM pony exhaust blower in the room with a snorkle on it. That would probably cost under a $1000 for the blower, vent tube, and a sound box to keep the noise down. So that might be an option for you. Usually you don't have provide for makeup air with those.

Thanks again Cris
For such a thorough and well thought out
reply: really useful and will help things to get
up and running much faster

I will re-post when I get some progress

Thanks again
Simon

Hi there
It did ....
I showed the post to our health and safety
Guy and he said he was happy for us to start
The proposal so that's great!!!
I now have to write up a 'COSH ' list
For PLA and ABS and
Health and Safety working practise on a Prusa
Does (Chris?) anyone know where I could acces
This info

Thank you guys

Congratulations, the first hurdle has been cleared.

Since I'm in the USA my knowledge of COSHH is limited, so definitely verify my advice with a safety person in the UK.

I'd start with reviewing the following: [www.hse.gov.uk]

Most likely you will need to have a 3 ring binder put somewhere prominently in the room and labeled COSHH or MSDS or SDS.
Inside the binder you will need to have the MSDS sheets for PLA, ABS, and anything else run through the Prusa.
The MSDS sheets can be found at [www.bitsfrombytes.com]
Some safety officers want you to have the exact data sheet from your supplier, other officers are happy with just a reference.

You will also need a written plan for how you plan to handle the toxic fumes from ABS - that's where the exhaust blower come in.

Most likely you will need to write up some kind of operation manual on how to use the Prusa with obvious warnings like
"don't touch the hot end", "don't stick tongue into belt drive", "don't stick fingers in electric outlets", etc.

You will probably also need a written emergency plan in case of fire, smoke inhalation, or people passing out.

If you have a chemistry department, they probably already have the emergency plan written so you could use theirs as a guide.

... if you want to handle this proper, then you should consider more than only (over-) heated filament:

The worst case scenario would be a heater, that won't stop heating - either the nozzle or bed.

Next will be overheating motors or the electronics running havoc.

So check, which materials (and glues when the bed is coated) are involved, when the heating components exceed normal temps and cause serious smoking or fire ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Thats really nice victor this one clear the saftety at workforce to avoide all cause of fire that should clearly avoide and not to take on the I have already study about such condition [www.sheilds.org] and knew the way to tackle on such condition even the practicle term is quit differnt.

Hi Gnomadix, COSHH assessments for ABS and PLA should be straightforward, apart from needing to assess any fumes given off when heated. The basic material would be pretty much inert under normal conditions. If you can find UK manufacturers of the filament, they will need to produce a product data sheet, which you can usually extract sufficient information to produce a coshh assessment. If you need an example coshh assessment, I can send you one.

As mentioned, the fumes would be the issue as I'm not sure what chemicals they would contain. Again, if a manufacturerr in the UK is producing filament with the intended use of melting / printing, this information should be contained within the data sheet.

Safety procedure-wise, you need to assess the hazards of using the machine, assess the liklihood / severity of an actual injury and then define any control measures which need to be implemented if the residual risk is too high. If you need any help with this, let me know and I'll try to oblige.

Ross

if this helps anyone (I am aware this is an old post) there is a new site risksafetytraining.co.uk