SAFETY FIRST-- and LAST
ONE THING ABOUT SAFETY makes it very difficult to sell: it is boring. Just as you are hyped up to drill the fine holes for an IC or bracing yourself to grind off the burred edge of a steel panel, you must look around the workbench to find your goggles. That takes all the fun out of the task. And, you tell yourself convincingly, it takes longer. So you screw up your eyes (to make a smaller target?) and press on with just a touch of bravado. The mark of a Man. That's the day the 1mm drill bit shatters or the grinder flings the panel out of the loose clamp and clear across the workshop to knock the top off the ferric chloride bottle.
As you wash off the blood, you are busy attributing blame. Not, of course, to Macho Man, but to the faulty hardware, the time of day or your zodiac sign. I am a Virgo (astrologically speaking), and this makes me fussy about detail, tidy, critical, artistic and generally maddening. It shows in my workshop, where it is more important for me to have some things labeled properly than to have others at all. Shortages are common, but at least I know what I have. In one rare period of complete confusion, my son looked in and commented, ‘Before you go (to that Big Workshop in the Sky), you will clear this lot up, won't you?' Well, I have. But that does not mean I am ready to go.
All this underlines the fact that safety is a state of mind. If you do not have the right attitude and you real ly want to be safe, you will have to find a way to get in the habit. If you are really the devil-may-care, fling-it on-the-bench-and-hit-it type, then you might as well move on to the ads: you will never believe me.
Industry executives put a vast That Big Workshop in the Sky amount of time and effort into safety campaigns, posters, slogans and incentives to do things the safe way.
Human frailty often responds with an encouraging burst, only to relapse in to the easy shortcut when the posters have fallen down and the bonuses have been spent. In Britain, the Heath & Safety at Work Laws help put some muscle into the responsibilities of managers and employees, but the common theme is that it is each worker's duty to act safely and each boss's duty to provide the right environment for that to happen. The weight of the law is enough to make some Hooray Henries think twice, but enforcement depends on detection.
As an audio amateur, you must “detect ” yourself. If you know your weaknesses, you are halfway there.
Let's get specific.
Notwithstanding the lower line voltage (118V) in the US, electricity is a killer. Britain's 240V standard commands respect from most knowledge able people, but its uncontrolled presence in the home accounts for 200 or so deaths each year, including those where fire was a consequence. I welcomed the solid-state invasion if only for the blessed absence of 440V anode supplies, and now the gurus are trying to convince me that I am missing something. Recent rebuilding of a 25W tube job has left me a nervous wreck-all those volts and megohms! Do not overlook the obvious pre cautions of well-insulated test gear, leads and prods, if only because the unexpected is more likely when you are faultfinding. I have found a neon tester screwdriver invaluable as a reminder that large capacitors hold their charge at least twice as long as you think. A 2k wire-wound resistor with insulated test clips hangs on a convenient hook to render the beast harmless.
Another useful separate those bits of test equipment that are grounded from those that are not. It avoids the connection of high volts to grounded test leads. The […] hardware damage, but your iS- ” reaction can wipe out hours of work and quite a few dollars' worth of unobtainable spare parts. [...] ion is to In the power room of a telephone amplifier station where I served my apprenticeship was a board on which a half-melted wrench was mounted.
It had been dropped on the main 24V supply. Underneath was the warning:
“It's the amps not the volts what kills yer. ” Allowing for the excruciating grammar, this is the best safety slogan I have ever seen.
Cutting, Filing & Drilling
The hazards here may […] mechanical engineers can make us careless.
Sharp tools are safer than blunt ones because they require less effort and do not lead to rude words and bad judgment. In particular, drill bits that have been sharpened properly do not […] me. Perhaps that is why there are not very many of them around anymore.
Fire
Is fire a hazard in an electronic workshop? It depends a bit on the surroundings. If you work in a closed-off portion of the family garage as I do, you can rely on an electric fan-heater for comfort, which is the safest and quickest source of warmth I know.
Soldering with a low-wattage iron and a good stand should present no problems. Solvents and cleaning ids merit a shelf of their own, preferably out of reach of children and pets.
If you smoke, put the ashtray where you are bound to notice it when you finish for the day. A good rule is to bring it out with you, but that is difficult to remember when you are staggering indoors with a 100W amplifier.
When you must use an open flame such as a blowlamp, remember that our ancestors used to worship fire. It may be waiting to pay you back for great-great-granddad’s little accident with the water jug.
Rollers, Ratchets & Loops
This enigmatic phrase is a clue to the causes of hundreds of everyday mishaps. To catalogue them would certainly prompt you to turn off and turn on in a hurry, but a few examples will serve to alert you to things you have previously attributed to Murphy's Law or the cussedness of inanimate objects.
If your workbench slopes toward the back, with a small lip along the edge, you will not be troubled much by rollers such as small screwdrivers, tubes, ball bearings, irreplaceable fixing bolts and the only pencil in the civilized world. Such a design allows you to retrieve rollers without banging your head on the way down and knocking over your coffee on the way up.
Ratchets are more difficult to spot.
One good one is the test clip, which you can push anywhere on the workbench, whatever is in the way, but which catches in all the important wires when you want it back.
Most pliers fall into this category: the handles do it. Combined with loops, ratchets can demolish any known electronic project without a trace.
The maddening thing about loops is that modern technology and the ...
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Glossary:
British | American
Putty or Mortite
Blowtorch
Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
Plasticine
Blowlamp
Health & Safety at Work Laws
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...resultant use of plastic covering has ensured that loops remain with us forever in the form of rigid test leads.
In a cold workshop, they can stand up on their own, like the Indian rope trick, except that no self-respecting fakir would tolerate the knots that have black and red leads going in and only black ones coming out. The bundle hanging on the wall with an odd number of ends (terminated, of course, in ratchets) is a mute witness to the march of science.
Murphy's Law In its basic form--i.e., if anything can go wrong, it probably will-this 'law' is harmless enough. But so many pages of corollaries have been invented-some of them uproariously funny-that it now stands to be quoted before any other reputable evidence. That evidence is bound to be rather unfunny and is likely to assign blame, cause severe loss of ego and make the lawyers smile grimly.
The fact is that people cause accidents, and the hardware is only contributory. Whether it is in the design stage or in the inability to Rigid Test Leads recognize ratchets and loops, safety is your can to take back-first and last.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alan Watling, recently retired from a lifetime career with British Telecom, lives in Colchester, England. He has been building his own audio gear for more than 40 years. In collaboration with Reg Williamson, he has helped to produce many TAA projects. He says he does not believe in magical audio alchemy--only Ohm’s and Kirchoff's laws. He spends much time now painting water colors in Constable's countryside.
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Also see:
Six-Transistor Ultra Low-Noise MC Phono Preamp
All-JFET MM/MC Phono Preamp, Part 1
Ultra-Low Distortion Phono Preamp: The LP-797