Difference between revisions of "Operating Committee Meeting 13/08/19"

Revision as of 17:51, 8 August 2019

We need to agree a set of guidelines for identifying whether something is to be considered dangerous for people to work on in the Makerspace, dangerous to have installed as Makerspace equipment be that loaned or owned, and/or requiring risk assessing first. Charitably put, currently it seems to rely on 'have people argued about it' rather than any empirical standard. The standard cannot be 'committee case-by-case decision', that has to be for exceptional cases, otherwise we both paralyse our activities whilst awaiting discussions & consensus, and occupy Committee time with comparatively trivial chore work.

We then need to apply that standard to any equipment be that new or current, and regardless of who wants to bring it in, otherwise it's just a waste of time at best and a selective oppression tool at worst.

Once said standard has been agreed, does the small CNC lathe meet that criteria?

• How can we efficiently handle similar situations in future without requiring a paperwork barrier/chilling effect for people wanting to wander in and fix their exotic kit, a mainstay of our activities and a new member hook?
• A generic 'catch all' Risk Assessment could be a way to both covering all the miscs and edge cases, and also the major equipment until the dedicated assessments are ready.
• A guide for people to DIY a basic first-case risk assessment might be an option, both to set standards & maybe crowdsource the paperwork, and to allow guests/members to do it before they bring kit X in and are turned away by Sergeant Jobsworth due to incorrect forms. That will rapidly lose us prospective members.

Following the above, we then need to allocate people to actually draw up the risk assessments/training guides needed for our current kit. Personally I (Adam) been working on the bandsaw RA; Guy unfortunately views the required training as 'don't cut yourself', both correct and pragmatic but also sadly unhelpful.

• In particular if upstairs is supposed to be a 'safer zone' then 3d printers need their assessment urgently.
• A laser assessment should also follow

Dust extraction really needs setting up by the workshop sanders. We have a spare extractor, the blastboxes from upstairs, cyclones, and too many hoovers; some combination of all that needs settling on and deploying.

On a related note the workshop ventilation/extraction is still a bit of a mystery, some investigation is needed to see what hardware was actually left installed in that pipe / the vents and if/how we can use it.