Author Topic: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements  (Read 8608 times)

Offline PTsideshow

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The revised OSHA standard for acetylene took effect.

The important or interesting part was the revision of the flow rates.

Quote from: OSHA
Although the new revision only advises against transporting in automobiles, it specifically prohibits storing acetylene cylinders in confined spaces, such as unventilated cabinets, closets, and drawers.

* While the old standard recommended a flow rate of 1/7 of the cylinder capacity regardless of the duration of use, the revision has advises a flow rate of 1/10 per hour for intermittent use and 1/15 for continuous use.

They have a pdf down load with all the details.
E federal register notice.

OSHA observer Finials rules for Acetylene Nov 2009

And for all the old farts, that were taught, to crack the valve to blow out all the contamination out of the connection. That is now a NO,NO!  :bugeye:

Quote from: OSHA
* It is recommended that acetylene cylinders valves are not opened without a regulator and flow restrictor.
* The new standard also suggests that the CGA connection is visually examined for signs of contamination and, that all contamination is removed before it is connected to the regulator.

7 pages of verbage but its only our tax dollars @ work US only
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Offline Dean W

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2010, 12:30:17 AM »
These OSHA people would protect us to death if allowed.  How ironic would that be?
But.. these particular revisions don't make any meaningful changes. 
The part about not storing acet in an enclosed place has been a regulated prohibition for quite a few years already.
Hard to believe, but that one actually makes sense!
All the rest of the quotes are not prohibitions.  They are recommendations and advisories, which are not enforceable.
So, us old farts can keep on cracking the valve to blow out the grinding dust and dead bugs.

Thankfully, the OSHA nubs have nothing to say about our home shops, in the U.S., or anywhere else.
Yay!

Dean
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Offline Lew_Merrick_PE

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2010, 03:51:38 PM »
These OSHA people would protect us to death if allowed.... <snip>...

Thankfully, the OSHA nubs have nothing to say about our home shops, in the U.S., or anywhere else.

When I started my apprenticeship (pre-OSHA), it was just about a badge of experience to be missing at least part of one finger for every decade worked in the trade.  Today, someone missing a finger is a rarity.  That is one of the things that OSHA has done for us.  There are many others.

Yes, I have my own OSHA horror stories.  Everyone does -- especially from the early years when they were knee-jerk responding to every congress-critter who had an injured constituent.  Many of their (early) "fixes" were worse than the "problem" they were trying to solve.  They learned -- and so did we.

People like to complain about bureaucrats.  Bureaucracy is mere the means (developed under Napoleon Bonaparte's regime) to manage large tasks.  Bureaucrats, like everybody else, come in the flavors of: great, good, competent, incompetent, and bad.  In 1972 the American government adopted "zero-based budgeting" that rewards those who move a problem from place to place without solving it and punishes those who solve problems.  The scary part are how many of our government employees (bureaucrats all) fight that system to do a good and fair job.

I have done work for more than 350 companies and government agencies over the years.  If you think American government bureaucrats are bad, try working with the bureaucrats at GM, Ford, or just about any other major corporation!  I cannot tell you how many times some corporate bureaucrat has tried to pass off their own lust for power with the canard that it was just "government regulation" -- and 100% of the time it was not!

The real problem here is that the U.S. destroyed our National Bureau of Standards in 1984 and replaced it with an industry lobby group known as the National Institute of Standards Technology.  I have done quite a bit of work over the years for NBS -- and a few jobs for NIST.  There is no comparison.  NBS developed standards while NIST funds studies (usually with college students without the necessary background or experience) to promote private standards (for which you have to pay $15/page each time you use them).  This is why today, four decades after we began the effort, we still do not have a good CAD/CAM interchange standard that can be enforced!  (I spent more than a decade working on this before I declared defeat and withdrew from the effort.)  We are about to lose the standard for fits that was developed over a century of practice and replace it with an unproven theory about how they should work!  Take a look at ASME/ANSI Y14.5-2009 if you do not believe me.

This is an area of more than passing interest to me (in case you could not tell).  The document posted at http://www.scribd.com/Lew%20Merrick, O-Ring Seal Application, was put together from my notes when, as a college student, I was a member of the team that wrote the o-ring section for the 1976 edition of the SAE Handbook under the direction of a U.S. Army, 30+ year experienced engineer.  It was removed from the 1980 edition (I was told that Parker-Hannifen complained) and has not resurfaced (except in my publication) since.  The leakage from the SRB seals on Challenger can be tracked to this (although the actual cause of the Challenger disaster was actually the weakening of the SRB support beams that allows the LH2 to escape from the External Tank).  NBS was making the case for taking over this (and other) application standards when they were turned into NIST.

Offline Dean W

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2010, 10:23:50 PM »

When I started my apprenticeship (pre-OSHA), it was just about a badge of experience to be missing at least part of one finger for every decade worked in the trade. 

That's ridiculous. 

Quote
Today, someone missing a finger is a rarity. 

Right.  They're sometimes culled and sent to work for OSHA, and I've seen that twice.  Keeps them out of places they
don't belong.  Some people simply aren't bright enough to work around fire, electricity, or rotating machinery.  Some are.


Dean W.

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Offline Lew_Merrick_PE

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2010, 01:12:38 PM »

When I started my apprenticeship (pre-OSHA), it was just about a badge of experience to be missing at least part of one finger for every decade worked in the trade. 

That's ridiculous.

I started working at Everett Tool & Die in 1966 (and formally became an apprentice there in 1967).  It was a 175 man shop.  Excepting apprentices (there were 15 of us), there were four men with all their complete fingers.  Between 1967 and 1971, I worked in (about) 50 shops around Puget Sound (being sent to other shops to learn aspects of the trade outside of the work we normally did at Everett Tool & Die).  The ratio of complete appendages to incomplete appendages was fairly average.  Punch press shops were the worst and injection mold die shops the best in this regard, but I am talking about averages.

Back in the early-1990's I worked a project where we replaced the machine that made the Playskool "ABC" blocks.  The original machine had been made sometime before WWI.  I was working with a group of men in their late-60's to mid-70's age-wise.  All of them had started in the machining trades in the 1930's and had done maintenance for many years on the machine we were replacing -- they were the "design review committee" for the project brought in by Hasbro/Playskool (mostly from retirement).  (I had asked to have this team assembled.)  They reviewed things in groups of 2-4, with the total number of "reviewers" being 14.  Only one of them had all his fingers -- and several of them were missing entire hands.  They were all surprised at how few of the machinists making parts for this machine were missing digits.

I started my first apprenticeship (luthier) when I was 10 (just before my 11th birthday).  I started my second apprenticeship when I was 13.  (What would they do to a shop owner who allowed a 13 year old to work machine tools today?)  I remember when safety glasses were a bad joke.  I stood ankle deep in benzine (coolant for nickel alloys) for hours at a time.  I have seen five men killed when machine components "let go."  I honestly cannot tell you how many people (men mostly) I have watched carted off to a hospital bleeding severely from injuries.  That came to a (virtual) halt after OSHA and the National Bureau of Standards started setting workplace safety standards.

On the flip side of that, I watched a (nearly) 80 year old master machinist from Denmark who began his apprenticeship when he was 10 cut off a finger on a bandsaw because he was forced to wear safety glasses that (as was common in 1971) distorted his vision.  This was a man with (about) 70 years in the trade who had never before had an accident requiring more than a band-aid.  (Well into the mid-1970's I paid an extreme premium to get actual, optically flat, safety glasses.)

Baldrocker

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2010, 05:08:35 PM »
Quote
Thankfully, the OSHA nubs have nothing to say about our home shops, in the U.S., or anywhere else.

Dont be impatient, just give them a little more time.
br

Offline Dean W

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Re: OSHA Releases Final Rules for Acetylene Storage Requirements
« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2010, 05:18:16 PM »
Tell it how ever you want, Lew.  It's your story.

I was in the workplace and taught by the old heads who came through the 30's and 40's, too.  
Cement plants, rock plants, welding jobs, machine shop and the blasting fields.  It was nothing like
you say.  I know two men who were missing digits, and hundreds who were not, and they went
through the time you're talking about.  
Dean W.

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