I know I'm late to this post but will share my experience anyway as this is fresh on my mind and may help provide some guidance to others in the future.
We recently had a fairly significant furnace blow out due to moisture being introduced into a melt furnace inadvertantly through scrap that was being charged in the furnace. Luckily the PPE that I require our foundry workers to wear kept one of our workers from being burned over significant portions of his body. In fact the worker was not injured at all due to a change in the type of PPE we now use.
We have always required workers to wear foundry PPE but in the past the available products out there were only able to limited the degree of injury of the wearer.
While FR clothing and aluminized outerwear will prevent the majority of burns that I expect a home refiner would be exposed to in the smelting / refining, and casting process it is not impervious. Even with wearing FR clothing and aluminized outerwear, if a catastrophic failure occurred in a mold due to moisture being trapped in a crack or being introduced into the furnace melt, the PPE may not be eough to prevent serious burns.
Make no mistake molten metal can burn through an aluminized jacket and FR clothing if a big enough glob of molten metal splashes on the wearer.
FR clothing is not fire proof and is only designed to self extinguish if it comes in contact with a high heat source so that the area of injury is limited to the area exposed to the heat source. If molten metal splashes on FR clothing and sticks, the molten metal can easily burn through the FR clothing, resulting in a burn to the wearer. The larger the molten metal splash the greater the injury.
Wearing an aluminized jacket over top of FR clothing adds extra protection as the jackets that I am familiare with are usually made of a thicker material such as leather with an aluminized coating. The aluminized coating is designed to reflect heat but will quickly burn through if large molten metal splashes stick too it. However, since the material these jackets are made of are usually thicker it can give the wearer time to shuck the jacket off before the thermal energy has time to burn through the material and result in an injury.
With small splatters, and low melt temperature metals this may be enough for the hobby smelter to avoid being injured, but I have still seen injuries occur with people wearing this type of PPE.
There is PPE now available that significantly increases the odds that no injury will take place even if the person is struck by large molten metal splatters or blow outs that can occur while working around molten metal. This PPE uses new designer materials that are designed to actually repel molten metal. Molten metal should not stick to the clothing at all and should just bead up and run / fall off.
Since the molten metal does not stick to the clothing there is not enough time for the thermal energy in the molten metal to transfer through the outerwear layer to the wearer. If we had not switched to this new style of PPE several months ago our worker that was struck several weeks ago would have probably been significantly burned.
The brand that we use is Quantum. The jackets are much lighter than what you would expect. The jackets are very similar in weight to the green FR sparks jackets that are readily available. In addition they are vented in the back to allow air circulation. Our employees love them due to the significant improvement in comfortability and the greater protection that is provided.
The jackets are expensive (around $250 a piece), but the manufacturer claims that the jackets are more durable than aluminized jackets and so the extra initial cost should be recovered due to not having to buy new PPE as often. We have not used the jackets long enough for me to know yet if this is true but they do seem to be holding up well.
Regardless I believe in the product now after seeing what our employee survived through without being injured.
The manufacturer's website is below:
https://www.quantumprotective.com/home.html
In addition to this new style jacket i require all foundry workers to wear the following PPE while working near molten metal.
Fiberglass hard hat with faceshield
Safety glasses
Hearing protection
Cotton underwear
Long sleeve FR shirt
FR pants
Heat resistant gloves
Aluminized chaps
Quantum jacket
Metatarsal boots
All our furnaces have captive ventilation systems
I know this is probably too much for the home refiner but at the very least you need to wear hard hat, safety glasses, faceshield, FR clothing, good heat resistant gloves, leather boots, and a protective outer layer (Aluminized or the Quantum jacket if you can afford it), and have a way to prevent exposure to metal fumes.
I would post pictures of the explosion if I could but my company has a social media sharing policy that keeps me from doing that. I will try to get permission from the company to post these pictures and if I do will post them on here.
We recently had a fairly significant furnace blow out due to moisture being introduced into a melt furnace inadvertantly through scrap that was being charged in the furnace. Luckily the PPE that I require our foundry workers to wear kept one of our workers from being burned over significant portions of his body. In fact the worker was not injured at all due to a change in the type of PPE we now use.
We have always required workers to wear foundry PPE but in the past the available products out there were only able to limited the degree of injury of the wearer.
While FR clothing and aluminized outerwear will prevent the majority of burns that I expect a home refiner would be exposed to in the smelting / refining, and casting process it is not impervious. Even with wearing FR clothing and aluminized outerwear, if a catastrophic failure occurred in a mold due to moisture being trapped in a crack or being introduced into the furnace melt, the PPE may not be eough to prevent serious burns.
Make no mistake molten metal can burn through an aluminized jacket and FR clothing if a big enough glob of molten metal splashes on the wearer.
FR clothing is not fire proof and is only designed to self extinguish if it comes in contact with a high heat source so that the area of injury is limited to the area exposed to the heat source. If molten metal splashes on FR clothing and sticks, the molten metal can easily burn through the FR clothing, resulting in a burn to the wearer. The larger the molten metal splash the greater the injury.
Wearing an aluminized jacket over top of FR clothing adds extra protection as the jackets that I am familiare with are usually made of a thicker material such as leather with an aluminized coating. The aluminized coating is designed to reflect heat but will quickly burn through if large molten metal splashes stick too it. However, since the material these jackets are made of are usually thicker it can give the wearer time to shuck the jacket off before the thermal energy has time to burn through the material and result in an injury.
With small splatters, and low melt temperature metals this may be enough for the hobby smelter to avoid being injured, but I have still seen injuries occur with people wearing this type of PPE.
There is PPE now available that significantly increases the odds that no injury will take place even if the person is struck by large molten metal splatters or blow outs that can occur while working around molten metal. This PPE uses new designer materials that are designed to actually repel molten metal. Molten metal should not stick to the clothing at all and should just bead up and run / fall off.
Since the molten metal does not stick to the clothing there is not enough time for the thermal energy in the molten metal to transfer through the outerwear layer to the wearer. If we had not switched to this new style of PPE several months ago our worker that was struck several weeks ago would have probably been significantly burned.
The brand that we use is Quantum. The jackets are much lighter than what you would expect. The jackets are very similar in weight to the green FR sparks jackets that are readily available. In addition they are vented in the back to allow air circulation. Our employees love them due to the significant improvement in comfortability and the greater protection that is provided.
The jackets are expensive (around $250 a piece), but the manufacturer claims that the jackets are more durable than aluminized jackets and so the extra initial cost should be recovered due to not having to buy new PPE as often. We have not used the jackets long enough for me to know yet if this is true but they do seem to be holding up well.
Regardless I believe in the product now after seeing what our employee survived through without being injured.
The manufacturer's website is below:
https://www.quantumprotective.com/home.html
In addition to this new style jacket i require all foundry workers to wear the following PPE while working near molten metal.
Fiberglass hard hat with faceshield
Safety glasses
Hearing protection
Cotton underwear
Long sleeve FR shirt
FR pants
Heat resistant gloves
Aluminized chaps
Quantum jacket
Metatarsal boots
All our furnaces have captive ventilation systems
I know this is probably too much for the home refiner but at the very least you need to wear hard hat, safety glasses, faceshield, FR clothing, good heat resistant gloves, leather boots, and a protective outer layer (Aluminized or the Quantum jacket if you can afford it), and have a way to prevent exposure to metal fumes.
I would post pictures of the explosion if I could but my company has a social media sharing policy that keeps me from doing that. I will try to get permission from the company to post these pictures and if I do will post them on here.
