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Are cement mixers dangerous?


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While walking around my green field plot with a builder, on the next door plot a brickie was working solo. Mid conversation the petrol powered mixer coughed and my builder chappie span around alert for potential trouble.

 

Do cement mixers have a reputation for mangling humans?

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They send a shiver down my spine tbh, and I'm too aware that they would literally twist you in half before stopping........well they wouldn't stop tbh. 

To see guys poking shovels in there with their hands on the grips makes me wince, but yet not a single story of anyone ever getting mutilated has burnt my ears. :S

Curiosty says "go look on YouTube" but the other part of me that wants to go to sleep soon says FECK THAT !

One of the worst site injuries I can recall was done by the humble plasterers trowel. 

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The proper old ones with starting handles that often stick are deadly. By the time you get it started your arm is dead and then you have to pull the handle of before it starts flying round like a propeller. 

Never stick a shovel in the front of the mixer. Best case it goes round and sweeps you of your feet. Worst case is an arm of if your even that lucky.

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My 110V mixer is a cast off I was given to see "if I could get it going". I bought the last six belts for that model from Belle, a new drive cog and built up the broken Shuko mains inlet with resin. That and MIG'd some patches over the drum. I've abandoned it under a tarp until I make a new stand for it. The current one has the consistency of a tin foil lace doily.

 

To do the wet room corner I borrowed one with a home made stand, tip too far forward and it's coming off. Only being a big bloke allowed me to "get it back on" one time it started to go. I'm that stupid I worry I might try and fight one! The on/off switch is a lever you push down with a bit of bent fence wire to keep it on.

 

I think this was previously the "push start" one until he replaced the cap. Turning on it'd just hum until you gave it a roll by hand. You could make it go in reverse! :)

 

Unmodified mixers are dangerous, modified ones lethal.

Edited by Onoff
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Most accidents with cement mixer relate to the cranking handle.There's still a lot of them about.

 

Broken fingers and hands. Lids dropping on head while trying to start.

 

The type that the larger hire company’s have with a battery and a pull start are safer

But more expensive.

 

One of the young brickies that I had working on our plot broke his hand on the very first day.

 

After that they would wait for me to arrive to start it and leave it running all day if I wasn’t there to restart it.

 

They were used to using cylo mix.

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Washing machines are pretty nasty.

There was a case in Desborough, part of High Wycombe, where a woman had her hand wrenched off at the launderettes.

Apparently it was like a horror movie with the woman wandering around the street with blood spurting.

I missed it, by seconds, but my work mate saw it in all its gory detail.

 

Now we have to wait a whole minute after the cycle has stopped before we can open the door.

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I am guilty of hanging half way inside the mixer with a spade....  was told to do it that way when i was 16 and have been doing it like that for the last 30+ years without incidence. Not saying its safe mind you.  

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Keep a bucket of clean gravel on hand and get your mixer spotless every time you use it... Then stuff won't stick to the drum and you won't have to stick shovels inside it!

Mind you I am guilty of using a stick to prod pockets of unmixed cement.

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6 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Thats you perfectly safe for the foreseeable. :)

 

.... decade ....

 

I hate the things - noisy and lethal as they have no real clutch to talk of. 

 

I saw the starting handle for one buried in the radiator of a JCB once - it had spun it across a site. Anyone in the way of that would have been badly injured at best .. 

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  • 4 months later...
On 17/04/2018 at 07:14, Crofter said:

Keep a bucket of clean gravel on hand and get your mixer spotless every time you use it... Then stuff won't stick to the drum and you won't have to stick shovels inside it!

Mind you I am guilty of using a stick to prod pockets of unmixed cement.

 

 

After clocking up a month of mixer experience I can see the wisdom in this advice. I would never poke inside a turning mixer to dislodge something stuck to the drum but I sometimes stop the mixer to scrape off a static scumline of unmixed cement or sand at the edge of the churning mix. I doubt this scumline would form with a pristine clean drum.

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