Knives
This seems pretty basic – but the most common injuries I’ve seen in the shops I have worked in are cuts from razor-knives. Especially with pre-pregs, the amount of time people spend cutting plies and trimming laps is huge, and those big sharp (or worse – dull!) blades are super dangerous. This is just a quick plug for sharp blades and safety rulers. If you manage a facility where composites work is done, you should buy safety rulers and good cutting mats. If you work somewhere cutting composites and don’t have these – bother your boss to get them! Fingers don’t grow on trees.
I’m a big fan of the Olfa style snap-blade knives, but be careful to only have a little bit of blade sticking out. The way the one in the picture is sticking out far enough that pressure could break off (and fling) the sharp end – that’s bad. Avoid that!
Also – that blade should have been snapped off long ago. It’s so dull it has chunks missing!
And about those spent blades… make sure you have a “sharps” container for disposing of them. Even if it’s just a well marked paint pot with a bunch of broken blades in it… just don’t chuck them in the trash.
Sharp Part Edges
Another way to cut yourself is with the sharp edges of freshly-demolded parts. I have a black line in one finger from a carbon-cut more than a decade ago – not sure if it’s dust or a shard but the cut was nasty when it happened! Safety gloves are a great idea for demolding and handling sharp parts. You can buy kevlar-reinforced gloves for less than $10US that are thin enough to still have some feel. Leather gloves work pretty well too. One big problem with re-usable gloves is that they quickly get composite dust inside them and that is totally miserable. Disposable cloth “inspection gloves” are great as a liner for heavier gloves.