On 23 Jul, 13:07, FoggyTown wrote:

there are two considerations here. The first is braking. Woodworking
machines now have to be fitted with brakes to stop them in under 10
seconds.

This isn't strictly true. If you're a purely domestic user and also
using a pre-98 machine, you can dodge it. The rules apply to
"commercial" outfits (with a very much broader scope than I have time
to type) and also to new machinery supplied post '98. Some of these
issues (notably the spindle moulder head rules) also apply to old
machinery supplied after '98.

Another issue is that carefully designed brakes (i.e. not sudden
lockup from a crude DC injection brake) can brake within the
appropriate time, with a heavy dado set, and without applying the
levels of decceleration that can cause problems for a simple blade
locking mechanism.


Secondly, if you are fitting moulding cutters into a circular saw the
tool has to be of the limited cutter projection type.

This is always good advice. Although it's easy to buy dado sets in the
UK (and hard to buy new saws that can mount them!) I haven't seen new-
ish tooling that wasn't of a suitable design for sale in several
years. Remember this is quite old legislation we're talking about -
nearly 10 years since most of it came into effect and even the legacy
permissions expired nearly 5 years back.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis38.pdf

Good advice on that site. It's worth reading the indexes and many of
the guideline documents.

I can't tell. Did he answer my question?

He pointed you to two good resources that do.

Does that mean that if you
have brakes which stop a cutter-loaded arbor in 10m seconds that the
cutters can be used?

Yes. You don't even need brakes.

_If_ you can stop in the time limit, you're OK. Doesn't matter whether
you have deliberate brakes, or just a sluggish belt drive and
bearings.

You _may_ need a complicated piece of kit to achieve this, for a heavy
piece of tooling. Heavy tooling shouldn't be stopped that quickly if
it's only held in place by a left-handed nut. Trying to do so would be
even more dangerous than a slower rundown time. Even though PUWER
doesn't explicitly state so, there's still a general provision that
unsafe equipment must not be used! Badly thought-out brakes would
certainly count as such (incidentally, I used to design braking
systems for huge metal-bashing presses. I stopped doing so owing to
the liability issues, when I felt that the portion of the design I had
control over wasn't adequate to ensure a safe overall machine).

Is a dado cutter considered to be a moulding cutter?

Yes (in this context).


I LOVE governments! I think from now on I'll just stack 3 or 4
regulat TS blades side-by-side and make my own cutter.

That doesn't work too well, and it's no better (PUWER wise) than using
the right tools.