FRC Shop Safety and PPE: Eye Protection Rules, Machine Rules, and Real Inspections

Eye protection is required any time you're doing work that could throw debris or splash a chemical, and it's required the entire time you're in a pit, near a field, or on a practice field at a FIRST event, whether or not you're actively touching a robot. Those are two different rules that happen to use the same glasses, and mixing them up is why teams end up either lax in the shop or confused at their first event. FIRST tells you less than you'd think about your own build space, a lot about what you can bring into a pit, and leaves the actual inspection process up to you. Here's what's required, what's smart practice, and how to run a check that catches something before it becomes an incident report.

Everything below comes from the current FIRST Safety Manual (Rev. October 2025) and the 2026 REBUILT Game Manual's Event Rules (Section 14). Both get revised most seasons, so check the current documents before you build a safety program around specific rule numbers.

The eye protection standard, and when it actually applies

FIRST doesn't require a specific brand or ANSI edition year. The requirement is that eyewear be ANSI-approved, UL Listed, CE EN166-rated, AS/NZS-certified, or CSA-rated, non-reflective, and either clear or lightly tinted; the rule doesn't name approved colors, it just says your eyes have to stay visible to others. Prescription glasses that aren't rated to one of those standards need ANSI-rated goggles over them; rated prescription glasses can just add side shields. The standard behind most of this is ANSI/ISEA Z87.1, most recently updated as Z87.1-2025, and a frame or lens stamped "Z87+" rather than plain "Z87" has passed an added high-velocity test, though FIRST only requires the base mark.

In the shop, it's a task-based rule: wear eye protection any time you're doing work that could throw debris or splash a chemical, including grinding, drilling, soldering, cutting, and welding. CAD work doesn't need glasses; picking up a drill does.

At a FIRST event, it's a place-based rule. Per Event Rule E101 and Safety Manual section 4.1, glasses are required for everyone anywhere in the pit station and walkways, near the arena and field, and on the practice field, whether or not anyone's actively wrenching. The one carve-out: the first 10 minutes of load-in and the first 10 minutes each day pits open, as long as you haven't started working on the robot or setting up your pit yet. After that, glasses stay on all day. Bring more spare pairs than you think you need, and don't keep them all in one box at the front of the pit; if that box leaves with one person, the rest of your team can't get in.

Foot protection rides along in the same rule: closed-toe, closed-heel shoes at all times around robots and in the pit. Flip-flops, sandals, mules, and Crocs are explicitly called out as not acceptable, for participants and spectators alike.

Machine-specific rules: your own shop vs. the competition pit

FIRST has almost nothing to say about the tools in your build space during the season; that's between you, your mentors, and whatever school or facility rules apply (usually tracing back to OSHA's machine guarding standard, 29 CFR 1910.212, which requires a guard at the point of operation on any machine that can cut, shear, or catch a hand). What FIRST does give you is a set of shop habits in the Safety Manual, plus a much stricter list of what's allowed once you get to a pit.

In your build season shop:

• Drill presses and band saws: no gloves. A glove can get pulled into a rotating chuck or blade before you can react; a bare hand can be pulled back. Clamp the workpiece instead of hand-holding it, especially on the drill press, where a bit catching an unclamped part is a common cause of shop injuries.
• Any rotating machinery: tie back long hair, remove loose jewelry, and keep hoodie drawstrings and loose sleeves clear.
• Guards stay on. A tool with a missing guard or visible damage comes out of service (unplugged, tagged, key removed) until a mentor fixes it, not "worked around for today."
• Heat tools like soldering irons go down on a fire-resistant surface, live in a stand when idle, and never get left where someone can back into the hot element.
• Behind the line when the robot's running. Whenever it's powered and enabled on a test stand, everyone not driving stays behind shielding or outside the marked area.

At a competition, the list is shorter and stricter. Event Rules E504 through E511 govern what you can bring into your pit:

• No tools that throw sparks or produce open flames: welders, bench or angle grinders, gas torches.
• No floor-standing power tools: full-size drill presses, band saws, table saws.
• Small, bench-top machinery with its guards intact is fine if one person can lift it: small band saws, bench-top drill presses, desktop CNC mills, sanders.
• No brazing or welding.
• Soldering only with an electric iron or gun.
• No 3D printer or other automated process left running unattended overnight in the pit.
• Pit power is shared with neighboring teams; a team that keeps tripping a breaker gets asked to cut back on what's plugged in.

A full-size mill, lathe, or table saw stays at your shop. It doesn't travel to the event.

What belongs in the pit safety kit

This isn't the same list as a general pit checklist and packing list, which covers spare parts and tools for keeping the robot running. A safety kit is narrower, built around the specific hazards FIRST's manual calls out by name:

• Multiple spare pairs of safety glasses, kept in the pit, not all bundled with one person.
• Battery-acid supplies, for lead-acid batteries: sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to neutralize a leak, acid-resistant rubber or plastic gloves, and a non-metallic leak-proof container to isolate a damaged battery. This is direct Safety Manual guidance, not a nice-to-have. Full charging and storage practice lives in the battery guide; this kit is just the acid-exposure response.
• A Class C fire extinguisher, relevant because lithium-ion fires, like a damaged cordless tool battery or a coprocessor's power pack, produce toxic smoke; only attempt to put one out yourself if it's very small and you're trained on the extinguisher, otherwise call emergency services.
• An SDS binder with Safety Data Sheets for every chemical, adhesive, and battery your team uses. FIRST requires teams to collect and store these; the pit is where they need to be when something spills.
• Electrical tape for covering exposed battery terminals in transport and storage, so a dropped tool can't bridge both terminals and short the battery.
• Hearing protection, simple earplugs, for anyone running a loud tool for an extended stretch.
• Work gloves for uncrating and re-crating, the one place FIRST explicitly recommends gloves in the pit workflow.

Running a safety inspection that isn't theater

A safety walk that produces a signed clipboard nobody reads afterward isn't a safety program, it's paperwork. FIRST's manual gives you a structure that avoids that trap, and it's worth using as-is rather than inventing your own.

Appendix A of the Safety Manual is a real checklist organized by category: hand and portable tools, chemicals, electrical, team pit, approved PPE, and stored-energy dangers, each scored yes, no, or not applicable with a location note. The part teams skip is Appendix B, the Corrective and Preventative Action Plan: every "no" gets logged with a description of the actual problem, an initiated date, a closed date, and a named person responsible. A checklist without that second table is just a snapshot of what's wrong today; the action plan is what actually gets it fixed, with a person on the hook and a date to check back against.

Two things keep this from becoming another form nobody fills out. First, assign a student Safety Captain, a role FIRST explicitly recommends: a student who works with a mentor to learn the team's real risks, inspects both the build space and the competition pit, knows where the SDS binder lives, and can flag a problem without it feeling like tattling. Second, inspect on a schedule you'll actually keep, not just once before ship: a five-minute weekly walk during build season catches a missing guard or a frayed cord before it becomes a habit nobody notices, and one thorough walk right before you crate the robot catches everything about to travel with you.

Run it that way and every "no" has a name and a date attached instead of disappearing into a binder. It's also the same habit that pays off at events: FIRST's Safety Managers are watching the same categories in your pit, and a team with a real safety culture reads completely differently from one running a memorized script for the judges.