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OT serous question - welder burn - how to prevent

SweetFeet

SweetFeet

Well-known Member
Welding guys,

My son wants me to ask your advice on how to avoid welder burn to his eyes. Is there some other kind of equipment that would help?

This is at son's work (I know nothing about welding... and my husband welds sub-arc and does not even have to wear a welding helmet except when he is doing touch-up work).

Son welds at work with a MIG Pulse welder. He has to lift his helmet to view gauges periodically - and he seems to even be getting eye-burn from the welding stations nearby him.

His work did upgrade him to an auto-darkening welding helmet. I think he might even be wearing some kind of shaded glasses underneath the welding helmet - BUT I am unsure about that.

I know welder burn is bad, especially repeated welder burn. THANKS IF YOU CAN HELP.
 
There is no excuse for getting flashes from the next station. The management of the place should make it a safe working place. He might talk to his supervisor about more protection at his work station. Stan
 
Not sure what else you can do. Auto darkening helmet should allow him to check his gauges without lifting his hood.

Most helmets I have had will dim even in a well lit shop if you look up at the lights. Forget welding outside in direct sunlight.

Sounds like his place of work needs to install good weld curtains between the stations. He still has to take his helmet off to get a drink, wipe sweat, etc. every so often.

Not sure my post if of any help or more of a comment.

30 years of welding, but not a "certified" welder.
Rick
 
welder burn is generaly from a reflection inside the helmet, he needs to attach a protective cloth to the bottom front and to the top of the helmet that drapes over the back of his head to sheild the inside of the helmet from reflection , and try to limit the the amount of time inspecting guages with his helmet in the up position while others are welding around him.
 
Long sleeved shirt and gloves. Good boots. Best welding helmet money can buy, and I agree, the place of work needs to offer approved protection from other stations.

That being said, I never had a minutes trouble with an occasional flash, or if I glimpsed another arc being struck or welding in process. I think you would have to look directly at the welding for 5-10 seconds to actually damage your eyes.

Disclaimer- I may no nothing of what I speak, so talk to a professional. There, dont nobody yell at me.

Free advice is worth just what you pay for it.


Gene
 
Yes, that shop needs portable or permanent screens that can be put between each welding station. One visit from OSHA and they would pay many times whatever the screens cost.
I have never seen a good shop that didn"t have them.
 
Only temporarily worked in a weld shop - -but agree with comments that screens between stations were required, and we had to wear dark safety glasses with dark side-shields to help prevent weld flash burn
 
Well first off I can say since I have BTDT and learned the auto dark helmets are part of the problem since they do not go dark from some one say 10 foot from you so you get that light and that is what gets you. I worked at a place that built boat docks and it was common to get burned due to be close to others. Only way to stop it is have dark shades on under the helmet or have welding booths so stray light can not effect each other
 
Portable welding blinds do wonders to avoid burns from others nearby. Lots are just red tinted plastic that eliminates the rays that burn.
 
That shop is in trouble because of no sheilding from other welding close by. His safety glasses should have tinted side shields
 
He won't have to lift his helmet IF he has a good auto darkening helmet. If his workplace won't bother to isolate the workstation's I doubt they sprung for a good helmet cause they run a couple hundred bucks. He needs to buy his own if they skimped. I use Arc Ones from Switzerland but there are others just as good just not cheap.
 
Call OSHA they will have shields up by days end. I did one time when they were spilling the degreaser over into the work area. It was gone when I got back to work.
Walt
 
Completely false. Auto-darkening helmets provide full time protection from UV and IR exposure. Doesn"t matter whether or not the helmet was turned on or darkened. Providing they meet ANSI Z87.1.
 
Like I stated below, any decent self darkening helmet will provide protection from dangerous amounts of UV and IR emissions. That said, the more you spend, the more comfortable you'll be. A Miller Elite or Elite Digital is money well spent, but it's $300+-, and in this case, I don't really feel it should fully fall upon your son to buy it. If he continues to have problems, the best bet would be to call OSHA. (So long as the company isn't going to end up with 5 or 6 figure fines.) See if OSHA will do a "random" inspection. Like the inspector was in the area and decided to 'drop in'. If your son talks to the boss about the problem, and then OSHA shows up, there will be some suspicion. It sucks that things have to be done in this fashion, but if your son values his employment, it's likely the best way to go.
 
I've been "flashed" by having to work on the same table as another welder. The problem with getting flashed is you don't realize it till about 2 o'clock in the morning when it feels like someone is pouring sand in your eyes. A bad flash requires wearing an eye patch for a day or so and taking special eye drops. Luckily I've never had to do that. It's ALWAYS a good idea idea to have a Dr. check your eyes if you have the sand in the eyes feeling because you could have got something in your eye. If your eyes are sore and you start rubbing them and there's something in there, makes it even worse.

Like everyone has said, this shop needs to put up welding curtains between stations. You can get them all the way up to a shade 8 and they aren't too expensive either. No auto-dark helmet made is a clear state when not welding. Most are shade 3 that should prevent a minor flash. However, sometimes you have to lift the helmet up. Depending on what your son is welding, he may not be using a dark enough welding lens in his helmet and/or it might not be installed properly. There is supposed to be a gasket around the lens or in front of it to block any arc rays from going around it. Pulsed MIG may need a #11 or #12 lens depending on the individual welders eye sensitivity. The first thing your son should do is check that his helmet is a dark enough shade and it's working properly(auto-dark). Wearing safety glasses with tinted side shields is a very good idea to help prevent getting flashed. Your husband needs to be very careful around the sub-arc as well. Generally the arc is shielded by the flux pouring over it but if the flux runs out or is somehow interrupted, there is no worse flash than a sub-arc flash!!! Sub-Arc uses very high current and is an extremely intense arc without the flux.
 
OSHA doesn't do random inspections, at least not here. They tell you in advance when they're coming.

"If he continues to have problems, the best bet would be to call OSHA. (So long as the company isn't going to end up with 5 or 6 figure fines.)See if OSHA will do a "random" inspection. Like the inspector was in the area and decided to 'drop in'. If your son talks to the boss about the problem, and then OSHA shows up, there will be some suspicion. It sucks that things have to be done in this fashion, but if your son values his employment, it's likely the best way to go."

Having the workers potentially go blind is better than the company being fined for not providing adequate safety to the workers? If the company fired someone because they reported serious safety issues, I think they'd have a hornets nest to deal with. Now, is only the OP's son getting flashed or are other workers as well? That might be the big question!
 
Not what I said. I never said they would fire him for calling OSHA, but they may find some small official reason to fire him down the road, because of the OSHA incident.

I never said it was worth the workers going blind. I don't know how big of company it is. A small company could end up with $50,000 that could ultimately be their demise. I think $50,000 in fines could bankrupt quite a few small companies, mainly because of the economy. Alberta's economy may be strong, but most of North America (along with most other countries) still has a pretty weak economy. I think fines are a good deterrent, if they're reasonable. $5,000 in fines could do the employees of a business a lot of good, and teach the company a valuable lesson.
 
Your son should ABSOLUTELY be wearing polycarbonate safety glasses at work. He should put them on before he walks in the door and not take them off until he leaves for the day. In addition to protecting his eyes from debris, polycarbonate plastic will block most of the UV light that causes eye damage. That will help him avoid flash-burns even when he's not wearing his helmet.
 
Back in about 1970 I welded with a mig welder on an auto assembly line. The bodies were ran through a booth so every welder had a man on the other side of the body at his station. Auto darkening helmets were not available then, or if they were we did not have them.

On that job most if not all welders had a #10 filter lens in their hoods and wore #3 shaded safety glasses with shaded side shields. I never heard of anyone complain of arc flash.

Your son's welding situation is most likely different but that is what worked for us back then.
 
JOB, I spent five long years at the Ford assembly plant in Atlanta in the late sixties doing the same thing. I never burned my own eyes. Other welders did that for me and I returned the favor. I think I still have some of that smoke in my lungs today. :) TDF
 
Kinda a bad situation. Businesses don't care about the employees and if he called OSHA then he would get fired or the whole place would get shut down and at the very least he would be outcast as a nark.
If they won't put up curtains he will have to get his own. Maybe there is enough scrap iron and sheet metal around he can make some up ?
Or find another job that welders burn is NO FUN I've done it to myself a few times over the years. I'm sure it didn't help my eyes any either !
 
He maybe getting the flash from a reflected weld arc on the back side of his helmet. I have covered the back of my head with an old shirt to stop the reflective weld flash.

HE may just have very sensitive eyes. My youngest brother does and he can't hardly be around a welder without getting flash burn. HE used a very dark helmet with wrap around goggles under it. Not tinted safety glasses as they can let flash in around the sides. He needs full goggles. They look stupid but they work.
a142625.jpg
 
Woah , hold on now. Don't go calling OSHA. He needs the type safety glasses that havbe a slight mirror finish. NO company wants anyone hurt or any accidents. All he has to do is wear his glasses and get up from his bench and ask the other weldors to place sheilding between him and them. If there is not enough sheilds then he can tell the purchasing agent to order more. This is something that can probably be taken care of by the weldors in their own work area and there certainly is no need for OSHA. He is getting flashed off reflections very common and very painful. There is no need to work like that or make a big deal of it to management. Just get up and move the sheilds.[ And keep your glasses on.]
 
When I was welding for a living at the frame plant, we had shaded safety glasses PLUS our auto-darkening helmets. The helmets were adjustable to a darker shade if need be...and now that I'm at home using my regular prescription glasses, I need a darker shade than I used in the plant.

Still, even with that, sometimes welders got "flashed"...happened sometimes when the batteries on the helmets died just as we were starting a weld. The old-school remedy they told us was to go home and put fresh-cut slices of potato over the eyes. If it was a REALLY bad flash, the person involved would be sent to the hospital ER...since I never went, I'm not sure what they did there.

Other than that, I'm not sure there's any help. The dark safety glasses I believe were a shade 2 green...you could read a newspaper with 'em, but not in low-light conditions.
 
Now that I think of it, I had one job at the frame plant where I was getting flashed regularly. I thought my auto-darkening Jackson helmet wasn't doing its job; turned out it was doing its job TOO well.

On that op, there was a robot arm with a flashing yellow strobe light...once I figured out how to adjust the sensitivity of the helmet to compensate for the strobe, everything was fine. But it took a few minutes to figure out whether to make the adjustment more or less sensitive. [It's been over 10 years, so I don't remember now which way I had to go...think I had to adjust for less sensitivity.]

So you might ask your son if there are any similar robot arms with strobe lights in his work area...
 
Sweetfeet,Ive been burnt more times than I would like to think about.And have been blindfolded for a week at a time.Mostly becaues of welding,but the worst by far was becaues of electrical explosions.Safety is your #1 goal and all of the guys has touched on some importaint points.Wear dark safety glasses,Keep good welding helments,even at your own expence,They are your own eyes and the only pair God will ever give you.As for remedes IVE used potatoes,Raw meat and eye drops.I think eye drops are the best.Keep some eye drops with him and use them from time to time.When you start getting red around your unprotected skin,chances are your eyes are all ready being burnt,Use the eye drops before you wake up in the middle of the night screaming

jimmy
 
0Why don't a dog's eyes get flash burns? I worked in a shop where there was a dog not far from where we were welding. It never seemed to bother it.
 
Adjustable - auto darkening helmet with lightly shaded goggles under it as a backup - both high enough quality to be comfortable enough to wear all day.

If battery powered, batteries are cheap - change them on a regular schedule, erring on the side of too often.

As for reading gauges, his work area should be bright enough for him to see everything he needs to see with out lifting his (auto darkening)helmet. Get a spot light if need be.

And there should absolutely be UV screens in between the different work areas. They're cheap too.

It should be safe for him to remove his helmet to make adjustments - deal with emergencies, etc. without checking with everybody around him.

I can imagine people giving him the usual "oh when I was your age we just squinted when we welded" kind of crap. But who cares. Nobody should ever give up their health and well being in the name of making a boss happy.

I wouldn't start talking OSHA before making a real effort to work with the company to eliminate the problems.

If they REFUSE to help that's when you mention them.
 
Maybe today's helmets but not the ones I used back in the early 90s I know I was at the hospital to many times for them to have worked. Don't try to tell some one something that has BTDT and learned to hate them and I will NEVER used them ever again. And by the way the potato thing does not work either when you have burned eyes
 
The shop most definitely needs to add welding curtains. There's no excuse for not having them.

The early auto darkening helmets were too slow to darken, and some don't have enough sensors. They're supposed to be much better now but I still use an old fashioned helmet.

As far as calling OSHA. Like was mentioned, talk to the company first.
OSHA does do random inspections.
 
Best way to avoid flashes is to stop welding, but that is not going to work for him. I go with what everyone says, get him a real good autodarkening helmet. My contribution is to suggest that he rigs up a couple of pieces of cheap plywood around his workstation if he cannot get anything else. Also good old fashioned used and cold tea bags placed on the eyes will help to ease the suffering during the night....At least he will get a nights sleep!
I am one of the lucky ones who is not bothered by welding flashes, still, I take my eye condition seriously and wear a good mask.
Sam
 
The booth I worked in may have been built in the 50's and modernized as time passed. I never watched anyone else weld with my hood up. So I never got a weld burn. The shaded safety glasses stopped the flash. We also had an excellent air drag out system so there was never any smoke in the booth. This booth was also at a Ford Assembly plant. Great place to work. We did our jobs and did not horse around, great bunch of young men. They did have some not so great foreman's.

Before they brought in the mig welders the men used stick electrode to weld the sheet metal. That was before my time.
 
Tessy52,

Dog probably didn't live long enough to have issues? If he did, how would he tell you?

Not trying to sound smart-alecky.

D.
 
You pretty much said that if the problem still exists he should call OSHA unless it results in too big of a fine. Who cares if it forces the company out of business. You wouldn't want to work there anyway cause you'd end up going blind or have serious problems with your eyes.
 
ANSI Z87.1 covers many things but doesn't cover UV, visible light, IR or welding lenses. These ratings are NOT a requirement but optional. Most products just say ANSI Z87.1. I've never seen anything like ANSI Z87.1 W10 U3 IR3 L3. It's a good idea to check these things out before you make such a bold statement as, "it's completely false."

4. Optional testing is now available for dust and mist, as well as for UV (ultra violet), visible light and IR (infra red) filters. These tests are not mandatory, but if a manufacture wants to claim this specific performance the protectors must be tested and marked accordingly.

Welding lenses shall be marked W followed by shade number. UV protectors shall be marked U followed by scale number. IR protectors shall be marked R followed by scale number. A Visible Light filter (such as a gray lens for sun protection) shall be marked L followed by a scale number.
 
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