Specialist Tools And Equipment

Almost every workshop accident is a tool being used for something it was not made for. A chisel used as a lever, a hacksaw used on timber, a bench vice used to clamp something for drilling and left unsecured, a hand held workpiece under a pillar drill that catches and spins. In every case the tool worked perfectly; the selection was wrong, and the selection is the designer's decision as much as the maker's.

The specification puts this topic in two sentences and both are examinable: how to select and use specialist tools and equipment, including hand tools, machinery, digital design and manufacture, appropriate for the material and the task to complete quality outcomes, and how to use them safely to protect themselves and others from harm. Notice the second half of that second sentence, because it is the half candidates forget: safety in this subject is not only about the person holding the tool. This is designing and making principles content, examined in Section C of Paper 1, and it is one of the strands criterion E of the design and make task marks directly.