Machinery safety in the printing industry

What you need to know

Most printing machinery accidents occur at presses during an unsafe intervention. Activities include freeing blockages, cleaning down; making ready; webbing up and maintenance.

Common causes of accidents include:

• Being drawn into in-running nips of rollers
• Contact with dangerous moving parts
• Entanglement with rotating parts.

The most common injuries are lacerations, cuts and bruises, fractures/ dislocation and crushing injuries to the fingers or hand. Fatal accidents have occurred recently on platens.

What you need to do

The following basic steps can be taken to reduce the risk of machinery accidents:

• Choose the right machine for the job
• Check machinery is adequately guarded                                                
  • carry out a risk assessment and compare to current standards
  • provide effective guards in accordance with the type of machine controls
  • provide safe systems of work
• Provide information, instruction and training to operators and supervisors
• Check and test machine safeguards and safe systems of work

Find out more

Chapter 5 of the publication The printers' guide to health and safety 2nd edition which is currently under review contains further guidance on safeguarding a range of printing and print finishing machinery.

HSE guidance is also available specific to the following machinery used in printing;  

• The guide to safe use of power operated paper cutting guillotines
• Safety requirements for using hand-fed platen (die-cutting) machines

A simple guide to the regulations that apply to the use of work equipment can be found in INDG291 Providing and using work equipment safely: A brief guide

More detailed guidance is in the Approved Code of Practice Safe use of work equipment. Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 L22 HSE Books 2008 ISBN 9780717662951