ABSTRACT
Machine guarding and related machinery violations continuously rank among the top ten Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations issued. Three general areas that must be considered for guarding include, namely: point of operation, power transmission areas and other related moving parts. For point of operation, the basic machine operation considered is the purpose for which the machine was designed. Hazards associated with the power transmission areas of machines may be close to the point of operation or may be located at a distance from it. Each type of safety device employed is a human-designed and developed piece of equipment that is subject to wear and failure. Proper procedures for shutdown, lockout, and startup must be followed to prevent injury. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is an important hazard analysis that is too often underutilized. The basic types of hazardous mechanical motions include, such as, rotating, reciprocating and transversing.
