Spartan Design uses power tools and fabrication equipment that can hurt you, hurt your teammates, or start a fire if used carelessly. This guide is required reading before you operate any power tool or fab machine in the shop.
This guide covers:
Spartan Design's shop has a CNC router (X-Carve Pro 4×2, 1.5 kW spindle), three laser cutters (Dremel LC40, Flux HEXA, Flux Ador), drill/drivers, electric screwdrivers, and rotary tools. Every one of these can cause real injury — eye damage, burns, lacerations, smoke inhalation — if used wrong. The risk goes up when students are working under deadline pressure, when adults aren't watching, or when someone assumes "I've seen this done before, I can do it."
This guide's job is to make sure no Spartan student ever has to learn shop safety the hard way. The rules are simple:
Each tab covers one safety topic. You should read all of them before your first solo operation of any power tool. After that, the Before-Each-Cut tab and the Machines tab are the ones you'll come back to most often. Bookmark this page on your phone — you can pull up the checklist before any cut.
For the day-to-day discipline of how Spartan handles tools (Loctite, charging, storage, accountability), see tools-guide § Tool Discipline. That guide is about how to take care of your tools. This guide is about how to take care of yourself and your teammates.
Mandatory for any drilling, cutting, routing, sanding, or operation that can throw chips, sparks, or fragments. Mandatory for the operator AND anyone within 6 feet of the operation.
Required when operating the X-Carve Pro 4×2 (CNC router, ~85-95 dB depending on cut), the band saw, or any continuously running tool for more than a few minutes.
Different operations have different respiratory hazards:
Every fab shop incident report has the same backstory: someone skipped the checklist. The fix is to make the checklist automatic. After 5 cuts, the checklist becomes a 10-second mental scan. After 50 cuts, it's reflex. Don't skip it on cut 6.
Primary hazards:
If something goes wrong: Hit the e-stop. Don't try to grab the stock or the bit. Wait for the spindle to stop fully. Find a mentor before re-starting.
Primary hazards:
Approved materials only. Per the Dremel LC40 operating manual Table 2: Acceptable — cardboard, paper, leather, fabric, plywood under 1/4″, basswood, EVA foam. Prohibited — PVC, ABS, polycarbonate, Delrin/POM, fiberglass, copper, treated wood. If you're not sure if a material is approved, don't cut it. See custom-parts-fab for the full routing matrix.
Primary hazards: same as the LC40 plus a wider material range. The HEXA can cut Delrin, but only with the formaldehyde-rated fume extractor running. Without that ventilation, do not cut Delrin on the HEXA — the formaldehyde release is a real respiratory hazard.
Coach call required for Delrin cuts. Coach Tansopalucks signs off on each Delrin cut individually. Don't self-authorize.
Primary hazards: The diode wavelength is fundamentally different from CO2. Per the Flux Ador FAQ, plastic cutting is "not recommended under any circumstances" on this laser. Use it only for engraving wood, leather, or other listed materials. Same eye-protection rules (lid interlock, never bypass).
Primary hazards:
Primary hazards: low compared to the rest of this list. Eye protection is good practice but not strictly required. The main risk is to the robot, not to you — over-torque strips threads, cam-out rounds heads, and a slipped bit can scratch a sensor lens. See tools-guide § Power Tools for the technique-focused details.
Primary hazards:
Delrin is the standard VRC plastic for custom parts. It machines beautifully on the X-Carve Pro 4×2 and is one of the materials we use most.
Per multiple manufacturer manuals, the following materials are prohibited from any laser cutter in the Spartan shop:
Every injury, near-miss, and equipment incident gets reported to Coach Tansopalucks the same day. This is required by Downey USD's CTE shop safety protocol. The report includes:
Near-misses get reported too. If something almost cut you, almost caught fire, or almost ejected — that's a report. Near-misses are how we catch the problem before it becomes a real injury. There is no penalty for reporting a near-miss; there's a real penalty for hiding one and having it become an incident later.
Spartan Design uses a three-level authorization system for all power tools and fab machines:
Do not operate. Watching others doesn't count as training. Reading this guide doesn't count as training. You are not yet authorized.
You can operate the machine with a mentor watching. The mentor verifies your before-each-cut checklist, supervises the first cut, and is available to step in if something goes wrong. This is the level for your first 5-10 operations on any new machine.
You can operate the machine independently, but Coach Tansopalucks or a trained mentor must be in the shop (not necessarily at the machine). You still run the before-each-cut checklist every time. You still report incidents.
Reaching Level 3 requires Coach sign-off on a per-machine basis.
Before your first solo operation of any machine, you should have:
New team members — rookie students, transfer students, parent volunteers helping out — do not get to operate any machines on their first day. Doesn't matter how experienced they are at home, doesn't matter if they have shop class on their transcript. They start at Level 1 on every machine and work up. The authorization system is per-shop and per-machine, not per-person.
Visiting parents and siblings at competition pits or open houses — observe only. They're not trained on Spartan's specific machines and aren't covered by the school district's liability arrangement.