Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1468649.015 - Dbg Arkansas, Llc.

Inspection Information - Office: Little Rock Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 8:13 p.m. on March 6, 2020, a middle-aged employee was working for a firm that stamped out metal parts and components for motor vehicles. Its main customer was a bus factory in the next state over. The employee had been on the job for only a month. He was still in his probationary period. He was operating a 90-ton (800-kilonewton) Cincinnati model 90 CB-2 press brake, with serial number 52227 and facility designation P-23. It was guarded only with a light curtain. Earlier in the day, an employee on the morning shift had selected the program to manufacture a battery box. For this purpose, the mute on the light curtain was set at 5 inches (127 mm). During the evening shift, the employee in the incident was operating the press brake to make parts for school buses. The light curtain mute was still at 5 inches (127 mm). For the parts the employee in the incident was making, an appropriate mute would have been 0.25 or 0.5 in. (6.35 or 12.7 mm). The employee placed his hands into the point of operation. The press brake actuated, and the employee suffered the amputation of eight fingers near the third joints. He was hospitalized. Individual operators had the ability to set their own mute areas and did not know the distance of the muted area when they brought up a program for a part. That employee who had set the brake to make battery boxes stated that she sometimes had to reach her fingers into the point of operation on smaller parts. Although tool use was allowed, there was no policy mandating their use. Employees made hundreds of parts over the course of the day while the machine was setup with a five-inch muted area, increasing the likelihood that the machine would operate with a finger or hand inside the point of operation. Employees performed setup of the machine at varying intervals, approximately once per day. There was an amputation on a different but similar press brake at the facility on September 30, 2019. That was investigation number 120618 and UPA 1504244.

Keywords: Amputated, Amputation, Caught In, Finger, Inexperience, Instantaneous amputation, Light Curtain, Lockout, Lockout/Tagout, Machine Cycled, Machine Guarding, Machine operator, Metal Shop, Opening, Point Of Operation, Press Brake, Traumatic Amputation