Safety Orientation

New members need a Safety Orientation before they can use the fablab independently.

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Should we develop room-level safety orientations? If so, who would perform them, how to track them, etc?

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It would be useful to have plans of individual rooms with safety features (eye wash stations, fire extinguishers, first aid kits) marked out.

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Marney the checklist we have should go here or be linked from here. The checklist itself should move here, both to make sure it's updatable and also to make sure that the way that is accessible to members inherently links to places on the wiki where they can remind themselves of what they learned, or can find out more. John is working on this, he put anything that could potentially be linked as italics so others can find them more easily and add the relevant links.

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General overview of this page (for drafting purposes)

• • Member Rights and Responsibilities
    • Four rights
    • Internal Responsibility System: everyone is responsible for their own safety and safety of others
  • PPE policies
    • PPE is a legal requirement, don't skimp on it
  • Member storage policies
    • Member storage types and costs
    • Communal storage and policies (could also be nested into rooms, like FDM spool storage)
  • Facility-wide housekeeping policies
    • Garbage disposal
    • Avoiding trip hazards by leaving random things lying around
      • Including air hoses across walkways
    • Clean worktable policy, labeling, jail
  • Safety information that applies to multiple rooms
    • Air hose safety/compressed air system/compressed air gun
  • Hazardous Materials/hazardous waste
    • Please supply SDS to North Forge
    • Workplace label requirements
  • Volunteer credits and explanation
  • Identification of member private spaces - only enter in case of emergency
  • No member maintenance
  • No removing guards or bypassing interlocks
  • Freight Elevator Operation
    • You can get stuck in the basement
  • Safety bulletin boards
  • Where to find safety information (hopefully here!)
  • How to get operators' attention
  • Safety incident reporting

• Individual rooms
  • Hazards you might face as a bystander
    • Dust/Fumes
    • Noise
    • Bright light (eg welding)
    • Projectiles
    • Sparks or fire
  • Location of safety features
    • Exits
    • Eye protection/Eye Wash Station/safety goggle bin (1st floor)/safety goggle bin (3rd floor)
    • Fire extinguishers
  • Special information
    • Back door monitor
    • Hiding sharps in the first floor in case of stabby randos...

Member Rights and Responsibilities

The right to know: Members have the right to know how to do their jobs safely, what hazards are in the workplace and how to prevent injuries from those hazards.

The right to participate: Members have the right to participate in safety and health activities in the workplace without fear of discipline.

The right to refuse unsafe work: Members are legally entitled to refuse work they believe to be dangerous to their safety and health or to that of another worker.

The right to protection from discrimination: Members cannot be disciplined or discriminated against for exercising their rights and acting in the best interest of safety.

Member responsibilities: Members are responsible for following safety and health procedures in the workplace (fabrication lab) and ensuring that their actions do not create unsafe situations for others.

All members must:

• Take reasonable care to protect themselves and others
• Follow the safety and health rules of the fabrication lab
• Use required personal protective equipment, clothing and devices
• Cooperate with the workplace safety and health committee or representative
• Cooperate with others on workplace safety and health matters.

The safety orientation provides important information like:

Policies and General Information

North Forge has previously published a safety manual, however it is currently being phased out. You can find safety information here on the Wiki. To request more detailed safety information, please contact any member of the Safety Committee.

In case of incident or near miss, please fill out the Incident Reporting Form.

• North Forge policies:
  • Substance Abuse policy
  • Harassment Policy
  • PPE policy
  • Hazardous materials policy

• How to arrange training
  • Most equipment requires North Forge approval to use. You can either take a course, or receive approval through a validation session if you've used the equipment before. We don't have any decisions as to which equipment requires or does not require training before use, so ask on Slack if you're not sure. We hope to make these decisions soon.

Housekeeping and Communal Storage

• Waste disposal (Garbage)
  • Empty garbage when 75% full
  • Avoid sharp edges that can puncture bags
  • Members are responsible for disposing of their own flammables containers/waste
  • Dispose of oily rags in the oily rags bin (paint room) to avoid fire
• Clean Work Table Policy (tmp)
• Hazardous materials storage

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Is there more than the Flammables Cabinets and the Hazardous materials fridge? Yes, member storage and private workspaces can have hazardous materials. do we cover that in the orientation, though? No, but we might want to have guidelines for member storage, maybe encourage people to store chemicals in secondary containers in case of spill, ID things that we don't want stored at North Forge if any, that sort of thing

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• • Flammables must be stored in a flammables cabinet with the member name and date. Cabinets are cleaned out regularly.
• Fridge and food storage
• Damage policies

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As in progressive discipline? or which? What happens if you break something owned by North Forge

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• Rentable spaces

Facility Safety Information

Right now this only contains information that's already in the new member orientation (slightly paraphrased and expanded upon as required, though if the information is stored on another page I have put them as a potential hyperlink rather than writing it out); we can plug in room level rules and use them to refine the orientation if required.

General

This is information that all members need to know, regardless of which equipment they may or may not use.

Members, in most cases, will be similar to workers as defined in the Workplace Safety and Health Act and Regulations 2022, even if they are not using the fabrication lab as a workplace (ie hobbyists). Members who use the fabrication lab as a workspace are considered workers; members who employ others to work at the fabrication lab have many responsibilities under the Act.

Safety Committee

Facility-wide PPE

Safety boots (CSA green triangle) must be worn at all times. Safety glasses must be kept on your person at all times.

• Do not wear loose-fitting hair or items (clothing, wired earbuds, jewelry, hoodie strings) around tools that pose an entanglement hazard ( most pieces of powered equipment).
• No horseplay or vandalism
• No activities that are otherwise prohibited by law (manufacture and possession of firearms, wire fraud, etc)
• Anyone under 18 must be supervised by an adult. Members under 18 are subject to special restrictions.
• Be aware of what other people are doing and plan your work accordingly. Ideally, plan your work so that it is not hazardous to bystanders. Cooperate and communicate with others on matters of safety; be considerate of other members' wellbeing while working.
• Do not let anyone into the fab lab unless you are expecting them. Visitors must be accompanied by a member.

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Do all visitors need to sign a waiver as well?

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• • Marney and Emelia can remotely unlock the doors if you forget your fob; ask on Slack.
• Lock-out/Tag-out procedures

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These are mentioned in the checklist but I don't know what is actually said during the orientation. Given that we haven't worked these procedures out yet, I doubt it is accurate. In general, people should either disable the equipment or put up a broken sign that covers either the power source or controls for the equipment (such that you have to remove the sign to be able to operate the equipment)

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• If you need to get someone's attention while they are using dangerous equipment, do not yell, wave, or touch the operator except in cases of extreme emergency. To get an operator's attention, stand to one side and wait for them to notice you.
• air hose shut-offs; if a hose ruptures don't try to catch it but instead shut off air to hose.

Emergency Response

• Emergency Evacuation procedures including alerting others
• Muster Point
• Locations of fire exits, Fire Extinguishers, First Aid Kits, Eye Wash Stations, Spill Kits

North Forge is committed to making the fabrication lab as safe as possible for as many members as possible. If you require any accommodations to improve your safety, please identify yourself to anyone on the Safety Committee. Also refer to Vulnerable Workers Policy in our Safety Manual.

Paint Room

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does it explain how to record materials when using the Paint Room Fume Extractor, or what can be stored on the Paint Room Drying Shelf and for how long? The orientation covers information about recording materials, not sure about shelves

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• Hazards: aerosols and fumes, flammable materials
• Shelves are for drying only - do not leave items on the shelves for more than 24 hours.
• We have legal limits on how much paint can be used per 8 hours. Check the log before starting to make sure we haven't exceeded that limit, and record your use in the log once done. A standard 6" spray can contains around 4 oz of paint.

• There is an oily rags bin for any rags used with polymerizing oils

CNC room

• Hazards: fire, dust (inhalation and eye irritation), noise, projectiles, laceration, entanglement
• PPE required: In-ear AND over-ear hearing protection, eye protection, dust mask (minimum N95)
  • If the ShopBot is running you need to wear both in-ear and over-ear protection, even if you're using the other equipment in the room
• Eye wash station and fire extinguisher available in the room
• Cleanup procedures
  • Air guns should only be used as a "last resort" cleaning option - clean most of the dust with vacuums, brooms, brushes first, then use the air gun.
  • CNC room has an air gun for cleaning CNC tool holders, and members must be trained to use them properly
• Dust collectors require training to use properly due to the electrical interlock system

Carpentry room

• Bystander hazards: noise, dust, projectiles
  • Operators: laceration, entanglement
• PPE: Hearing protection, eye protection, dust mask (minimum N95)
• No long sleeves/hoodie strings/wired earbuds/long hair, no work gloves

Ecopoxy Room

Fumes

Laser room

Fire

IoT Room

Lead

3D Printing Room

Chemicals

Tool Room

Sponsor Time?

Elevators

Oubliette

Design Space

Public

Metalworking Space

Burn