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Wood chipper accidents aren’t just the stuff of horror movies. Plenty of them (too many) happen in real life.
The pull of a chipper is so powerful that an accident sometimes creates a surreal scene — as if the person jumped into the machine.
How does this happen? A wood chipper relies on a powerful motor or engine that creates the incredible torque needed for turning a rotating drum with attached chipper knives. The combination of speed and torque allows commercial chippers to pull in branches at 20 inches per second. As an operator manually pushes brush and tree limbs into a hopper, the feed mechanism and chipper knives grab anything within reach. “Anything” may be tree limbs and brush…or loose jewelry, rope, an arm, fingers or long hair.
Statistics tell a sobering story. During 2016, three workers died after being caught in a chipper. OSHA logs show that in 2017, one person was killed and at least half a dozen others lost a finger or foot. Most fatalities result from being caught in the chipper; a smaller portion occur when an object kicks back from a chipper and strikes the operator.
To avoid chipper accidents, follow these precautions.
Chipper manufacturers have introduced a variety of engineering controls — such as feed tray extensions, flexible rubber curtains at the front of the infeed chute, feed control bars that stop or reverse feed rollers, pressure sensitive bottom feed stop bars, panic bars that stop the hydraulic system that operates the feed rollers, and emergency pull ropes that allow operators to reverse feed rollers1 — but engineering controls are never a substitute for human precaution and safe work practices.
Chipper accidents are rarely minor. Amputations can happen in less than half a second. Anyone using one of these machines should be adequately trained, and even experienced operators should never become complacent. Their foot, fingers or life could be at stake.
John Ross has written about industrial, automotive and consumer technologies for 17 years.