i drilled a hole in my hand...

I have luckily been realitivly injury free except for a few burns a scratches but probably one of my most embarassing injuries happened at Nats last year. On are mini bot we had originally used the ribbed tubing for our wire and had no trouble with it a regionals but during nats it was getting caught during practice so we decided to play it safe nd swith tubbing. Any the tubing was way to small for all of the wires so we figured we just need a sturdy hole on the wire so we tied one had to a support rigging. And were trying to thread the wire through. However we had to much tension and in the middle of pulling it through the wire snapped clean through in the middle sending everyone sprawling. I ended up backstepping right into my team at banging or head to gether then falling on a hammer (can some one please tell me why that hammer was there?)

PS In case u are curious we eventually did get it threaded and had no more trouble with the mini!

Last year with 247 we had a pair of non work related injuries.

Chris-
At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Chris was unwillingly put up for a crowd surf to a less than mediocre house band. Well.. he ran out of people to hold him up and two girls broke his fall at about stomach to shoulder level. He ended up landing on his neck, nearly breaking it. After security said "Have him sit out a few songs and take a breather" our mentor called an ambulence.
Chris had severe hemoraging in his neck and lost all vital signs twice during the night.
He's fine now though. If it hasn't been said enough already, his family and he thanks the FIRST community for their support after the incident.

Trevor aka T-Funk-
Trevor was an excited kid. While he cheered our bot on during the first round of eliminations he jumped up, came down, and well.. didn't jump right back up again. He tore his ACL cheering for us.


On the job injuries?
Well for me twice I had a piece of our robot that is actuated by pnumatics hit me. once on top of the head, the other time it cut my neck right next to my throat. Scary stuff.

--I was soddering something, and Paul and I turned to face each other at the same moment, and I stabbed him in the hand with the iron. Prophetically, we had dubbed the iron 'the cauterizing iron' just days before. It only burnt about the flat end of a stick pen's worth of area of his skin, and it wasn't deep, but that sizzle sounded nasty.

--Jay, the freshman on our team, likes to throw tools. It's not too bad when it's closed wire strippers or all-in-one crimpers or even bolts, but he's tried, more than once, to toss me a screwdriver. I've had many close encounters, and after two days with him, I decided just to let them fall before trying to grab them. (He's in line for some disciplining using the pneumatics-tubing whip. ;) )

Cut myself with parts on both my left and right hand at least 4 times. Took off a 1 mm thick piece of skin on my right index finger. Robot fell on my head, BOUNCED OFF, CAUGHT BY SOMEONE, and I fell to the ground; head bleeding. Sanded finger nail.

Background:

Our robot has two giant plastic "ears" made out of cut and rounded panels of the plastic that tops the ramp. These are rotated from a raised position to a lowered (and "outward") position by the Nippon window motors.

Now guess what? Not one, not two, not three, but four of our team members have been smacked by these wings accidentally at various times because they happened to be standing in the wrong place while we tested the controls or autonomous mode.

I myself took the worst blow, I was kneeling next to the robot when the auton mode caused a wing to swing down full-force into the very tip of my shoulder. It hurt like hell for about a minute and scraped me, but never even bruised. Luckily I don't injure very easily.

(I also have the honor of being the only person who's been hit twice by the things, just a few minutes before this happened one scraped one of my knuckles when it came down on my hand.)

I know that's peanuts to some of the nasty stuff other people have taken; the funny part is how often it happens. :D

We had a parents day at our school last year, and we decided to have our robot there as a demo. Anyways, we said, who cares, lets let all the kids drive it around. Well, before the words were even 20 seconds out of my mouth Omar had managed to drive the robot right through someone's grandmother.

Yeah Chan, I still have a mark from the cauterizing iron. I even got cauterized a few days before that by our Dremel. While cutting fake lexan (yes, fake lexan) with a cutting wheel, I accidentally touched the wheel with my finger, leaving a groove in my finger (grooves look amazing different from plain cuts, you should try it some time). Thankfully, the wound didn"t bleed at all because the wheel was hot enough to seal the cut as soon as it was made.

Ummm, quincey, funny story. Our robot has a modular involving pneumatic wings, and a girl happened to walk by the side when we opened them, SMACK! She wasnt hurt, I hope. . . But boy was she surprised!

I haven't read through all of this thread so I don't know how many times this has happened to other people.

About once or twice every night I was able to maime (is that spelled right?) some part of my person. My favorite memory of this came when I was using our chop saw and came close to not having 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. I didn't realize this until I started bleeding all over the bot. Oh well, water and duck-tape fixed that.