The "Hand-cuff" systems works well for production work, a metal stamping company I worked for used them on all the hand fed presses in conjunction with doubble buttons. They were "Possun Pul Back" brand, if I remember right. We used them on rather long stroke fast cycling punch presses. The operators do need to be sure that the cables aren't tangled with a fast press, if they are it really yanks on the wrist. The buttons should be placed such that there is plenty of slack in the cables at the bottom of the stroke whith the buttons down.

    At the auto frame plant they did not use the pull back system, only doubble buttons. On multiple operator presses there was a doubble button stand for each operator, the activation buttons were in enclosures so You couldn't press them if You fell against the stand. There was an emergency shutdown button on top of the enclosure. These stands were not mounted to the machine, they were on a length of cable so they could be moved to an appropriate position for the operators safety and convinience.

Allan,
Is the mfg of this press still in business? If so, contact them and see if they have any retrofits to get the machine guarding up to speed with todays safety standards. I had to do this for several of our lock out/tag out procedures due to the age of some of our equipement. Coming up with ways to lock and tag that old equipment was challenging, but I was able to work with the mfg and their service people to develope sound procedures and they also helped verify that what we came up with would actually work to de-energize the potential hazzards.