Join HSI Chief Safety Officer Jill James as she visits environmental health and safety professionals in their workplaces to explore important workplace safety topics. This video explains what to look for when inspecting different welding machines.

Video Transcript:

My name is Jill Chief Safety Officer with HSI. I'm a former OSHA inspector here to help you identify and correct workplace safety hazards. I'd like to share one safety training tip with you today when you are doing your safety inspections, specifically when you're looking at welders, and one component of a welder to be mindful of.

So right here we have a TIG welder and when you're doing your safety audits, take a look at what's called the lead on the welder itself, so that would be this length of cable we want to take a look at the entire length as you're doing your inspection and look for any cuts that might be in this protective covering, any burn marks and that might be an indication of where you want to unzip this particular covering and take a closer look to make sure the electrical parts on the inside of this case haven't been damaged and if they have then that's something that you would need to get repaired.

So take a look at the entire length of the lead and if you're noting deficiencies then have those properly repaired. Now let's move on to a different kind of welder and this one is called a MIG welder, and so again we'd take the look at the lead which is this and we would look at the entire length again just like we did with the other one looking for any damage and if we happen to see something like tape like we have here this would be something we'd like to take a closer look at.

Finding black tape on a welding lead isn't uncommon particularly when welders like to protect an area that might be laying over something where it could cause wear over time but it could also be an indication that there's damage to this lead and we could have live electrical parts that are exposed because of a cut through this. So you'd want to unwrap this tape and if you find a cut then this is something you want to properly repair covering a cut of a welding lead with black tape isn't an acceptable way to repair it because it doesn't give the same insulative qualities as the original covering did. You can repair them with something that vulcanizes or shrinks over the cut and there's a there's a proper a proper fitting for that and that's what you'd want to get.

So inspect your welding leads make sure you're looking at the entire length and noting any cuts that might be in them and get them repaired properly.

I hope you gained a safety skill today. If you know someone who needs this go ahead and pass it on.

Safety is everyone's business.