Selecting appropriate tools, equipment and processes · Designing and making principles
Revision notes
The importance of health and safety
Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is a national independent watchdog for work-related health, safety and illness.
The HSE helps companies and employers to meet health and safety obligations.
They produce guidance documents and investigate accidents in the workplace.
Health and Safety at Work Act (1974)
The Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) is the main piece of legislation for British health and safety law.
To comply, all employers must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that all employees and visitors to the workplace are protected in terms of health, safety and welfare.
Compliance includes assessing risks and adopting appropriate safety measures to provide a safe environment for product manufacture.
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations (2002)
To comply with COSHH employers need to prevent, reduce or control their workers’ exposure, as well as any workers in the vicinity, to substances that may be hazardous or cause ill health.
Hazardous substances include paints, varnishes, cleaning agents and adhesives that may be used during work.
They also include fumes created by processes such as soldering or brazing, and airborne particles such as dust created by cutting or sanding timber.
Hazardous substances will usually show a symbol that meets the classification labelling and packaging (CLP) regulations.
CLP hazard pictograms allow easy identification of a hazard as corrosive, flammable, toxic, etc.
Additional industrial measures
Where there is movement of goods around a factory floor, there may be designated safe zones or walkways that must be kept free from machinery.
Forklift trucks or vehicles will usually be fitted with a flashing light and/or reverse signal alarm to alert those near the vehicle movements.
Tool, equipment and process selection must match the material, operation, required accuracy and safety risk.Vacuum forming: a heated thermoplastic sheet is drawn over a former and held while it cools.Injection moulding: granules are melted and driven by a screw through a nozzle into a closed mould.Extrusion forces softened material through a shaped die to produce a continuous cross-section.Blow moulding: air expands a hot polymer parison against the inside of a mould.Rotational moulding coats the inside of a heated rotating mould before the hollow product cools.Compression moulding uses heat and pressure to form a measured charge inside a mould.A pattern forms a cavity in sand before molten metal is poured, cooled and removed.Die casting injects molten metal into a reusable metal die under pressure.Investment casting forms a ceramic mould around a sacrificial pattern for detailed components.MIG welding feeds a consumable wire electrode into a gas-shielded weld pool.TIG welding uses a non-consumable tungsten electrode and separate filler where required.Spot welding clamps sheet between electrodes and creates localised heat through electrical resistance.Steam softens lignin so timber can be bent around a former and held until dry.Thin veneers are glued and clamped around a former to create strong curved components.Flexography uses a relief plate and rollers to transfer ink to the substrate.Offset lithography transfers the image from plate to blanket cylinder and then to the substrate.Screen printing pushes ink through open areas of a mesh stencil onto the substrate.A focused laser follows a programmed path while assist gas helps clear the cut.Milling removes material with a rotating multi-point cutter while the work is accurately positioned.In turning, the workpiece rotates while a cutting tool removes material to create cylindrical forms.FEA divides a model into elements so stresses and deformation can be calculated.CFD predicts how fluids move around or through a product.A go/no-go gauge quickly checks whether a feature lies within its permitted tolerance.Vernier callipers measure external, internal and depth dimensions accurately.A micrometer uses a precision screw to measure small dimensions accurately.A tensile test records how a standard specimen responds as an increasing axial load is applied.Hardness tests compare resistance to permanent indentation under controlled conditions.Anthropometric data provides measured human dimensions for designing appropriate product sizes and clearances.Ergonomics applies knowledge of people to improve comfort, safety, usability and performance.Bauhaus design favoured functional forms, modern materials and design suited to industrial production.Art Deco is recognisable through geometric decoration, symmetry, luxury materials and machine-age influence.Memphis challenged restrained modernism with bold colour, pattern, geometry and playful forms.Arts and Crafts valued skilled making, natural inspiration, material honesty and resistance to poor-quality mass production.The life-cycle model helps explain how sales, competition and redesign priorities change over time.Sustainable design decisions should reduce resource use and keep products and materials useful for longer.
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