AN ENGINEERING firm has been fined after a worker was badly injured when one of its machines caught him by the neck.

Tomas Cisarik, 33, became entangled in the rotating machine tool when it caught hold of his hooded top.

Batley-based firm P Craven Engineering Ltd was ordered to pay £5,000 after admitting that it failed to safeguard its workers.

Kirklees magistrates were told that Mr Cisarik suffered terrible injuries during the incident at the small firm’s Heckmondwike factory on September 7.

They included a deep gash to his back when his clothes were literally ripped from him.

Andrea Jones, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive, said that Mr Cisarik had pre-programmed one of the firm’s CNC machines for a short warm up cycle.

This caused the machine tool to rotate at around 300rpm and Mr Cisarik, from Dewsbury, returned later to clean up the metal shavings.

As he entered the machine he felt a pull on his neck and his clothes were ripped from the top half of his body.

A colleague heard him screaming and saw he had been pulled into the machine.

Mr Cisarik suffered a gash 20cms long with a width of 8cms on his back, a cracked foot bone and severe friction burns.

Huddersfield magistrates were told that had the machine’s safety interlocks been working it would have stopped working as Mr Cisarik entered it.

Instead they had been intentionally disabled as the key had been placed into the main switch on the opposite door.

This wrongly signalled that the machine door was closed but in fact allowed it to run with the doors open, giving unguarded access to dangerous machinery.