Engineer's fingers trapped in cutter; COURT: Milling machine's missing safety guards cost company a pounds 14,000 fine.

Byline: Justine Halifax

A FIRM has been forced to pay out almost pounds 18,000 after an employee's hand was fractured when it got stuck in a milling machine.

ThysennKrupp Tallent Ltd was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after the gloved hand of one of its workers was caught in a vertical milling machine at the firm's factory in Quadrant Point, Cannock.

The County Durham company was fined pounds 14,000 and ordered to pay pounds 3,776 costs at Stafford Magistrates' Court last week after the company pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety legislation.

The plea came after a 26-year-old employee, who was machining a small bracket for an automotive robot jig, got his glove caught in an unguarded cutter which forced his fingers to bend until they snapped in September last year.

A nearby colleague hit the emergency stop button which allowed the injured man to pull his hand out of the glove entangled in the rotating cutter.

The court heard the safety guards on the Bridgeport milling machine involved in the accident had been missing since it was purchased seven years earlier. The HSE investigation revealed another vertical milling machine's guards had been missing for at least two years and that the emergency trip probe on a radial arm drill had not been capable of use for some months.

The company was charged with three counts of failing to suffi- ciently safeguard employees under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

HSE also bought a single charge under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations for failing to undertake sufficient risk assessments relating to the engineering machinery in the tool room..

Speaking after the case, the HSE's investigating inspector Andrew Bowker, said: "Guarding standards on engineering machinery in the factory tool room were poor.

"There was a view that skilled men did not need their machines to be suitably guarded.

"It was very fortunate that a colleague was able to hit the emergency stop button on the milling as the injury could have been much worse." HSE publishes Approved Codesof Practice, guidance and information leaflets to give practical advice on machinery guarding..