One of the great benefits of a community of heat treaters is 
the opportunity to challenge old habits and look at new ways of doing things. Heat Treat Today’s 101 Heat Treat Tips is another opportunity to learn the tips, tricks, and hacks shared by some of the industry’s foremost experts.
For Heat Treat Today’s latest round of 101 Heat Treat Tips, click here for the digital edition of the 2019 Heat Treat Today fall issue (also featuring the popular 40 Under 40).
Today’s tips come to us from Safety Consultant Rick Kaletsky, covering Shop Safety. These include advice on accurately labeling containers to match what is listed on safety data sheets, equipping eye fountains and deluge showers with audio and visual alarms, and updating missing or damaged bezels on gauges.
If you have a heat treat-related tip that would benefit your industry colleagues, you can submit your tip(s) to anastasia@heattreattoday.com or editor@heattreattoday.com.
Heat Treat Tip #3
Container Clarity Counts!
Assure that container label wording (specifically for identifying chemical contents) matches the corresponding safety data sheets (SDS). Obvious? I have seen situations where the label wording was legible and accurate and there was a matching safety data sheet for the contents, but there was still a problem. The SDS could not be readily located, as it was filed under a chemical synonym, or it was filed under a chemical name, whereas the container displayed a brand name. A few companies label each container with (for instance) a bold number that is set within a large, colored dot. The number refers to the exact corresponding SDS.
Heat Treat Tip #60
Alarm Your Eye Fountains & Deluge Showers
For emergency eye fountains and deluge showers, I recommend that each plumbed unit be equipped with an audio and visual alarm on a spring-loaded bypass. The purpose of the alarm is to alert others of the emergency. It is important that employees promptly respond to assist the employee who has been sprayed, splashed, or otherwise contacted by the dangerous substances. The bypass allows employees to easily test the units without setting off the alarm. If there is no bypass, employees might be reluctant to conduct the test, feeling it takes too much effort to alert all relevant persons that there is a test. As a result, an inadequacy of the flushing system could go undetected. With the bypass on a spring-loaded system, the person who conducts the test cannot fail to reset the alarm; it is reset automatically.
Heat Treat Tip #81
Gauge Those Gauges
It is quite common, in my experience during inspections, to find gauges that are missing bezels or have severely broken bezels. This can be a hazard if the stylus or general mechanism is damaged. I have found stuck styluses. A false reading may be given. Such a reading may result (for example) in an employee boosting air pressure, or the level of liquid in a tank or a temperature, far beyond the safe limit. I have also noted gauges where the stylus had been broken-off, and an employee merely made an assumption of what the proper “numbers” were. When conducting preventive maintenance tasks, check those gauges and replace missing or damaged bezels.
