Ontario fountain maker fined $60,000 after worker injured while setting up milling machine

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An Ontario company that designs and fabricates custom fountains has been fined $60,000 after a worker was injured while setting up a milling machine.

The incident happened on March 14, 2022, at Crystal Fountains in Concord, Ont.

On that day, a worker was setting up a CNC milling machine to manufacture fountain nozzles.

The machine should have had interlocks in place to prevent it from operating when its safety doors were open, but the interlocks had been removed.

The worker inserted a drilling jig into the machine’s chuck and a cutting tool into the machine’s cutting head, then entered a code into the machine’s control panel to initiate an automated “warm up” of the cutting head.

However, the worker entered the wrong code, which activated the chuck instead of the cutting head. This caused the chuck to spin and eject the jig, which injured the worker.

Had the interlocks still been in place, this injury could have been avoided.

By failing to ensure the interlocks on the safety doors of the machine were maintained in good condition, Crystal Fountains Inc. contravened section 25(1)(b) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Following a guilty plea, Crystal Fountains Inc. was fined $60,000. The court also imposed a 25 per cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.