Peter Herring, a businessman in Sheffield, failed to take notice of safety warnings received from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on several occasions, leading to a fine.
He had been asked to ensure dangerous machinery was properly guarded but had ignored those requests.
An inspector carried out a routine visit and discovered a breach on 11 September 2013. The offending machinery was a radial arm drill that had been left unguarded. There was a telescopic guard available, but it was broken.
The HSE served a prohibition notice to prevent use of the drill until it was properly guarded.
This was not the first time Mr Herring had been served with a notice. The court heard he had been served with an enforcement notice by the HSE in 2003 and a further letter needed to be sent in 2009 when the same radial arm drill was found unguarded.
The company have been prosecuted and pleaded guilty to breaching the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations SI 1998/2306. This was breached by the company failing to ensure that effective guarding was in place to prevent operators from getting too close to the rotating parts of the machine.
Peter Herring was fined £500 and ordered to pay £585 in costs.
HSE inspector Andrew Gale said: "Fortunately, no one at the factory was injured but this was down to chance rather than any good management."
He commented that not only had he breached legislation, but "disregarded any lesson he should have learned from previous enforcement action on the exact same machine."
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