we're only had like, one major accident. One of the kids on our team sliced his finger or something. All i know is that i was upstairs.. then came in the building room.. and they say that one of our Teachers and a kid are @ the hospital cause he like cut a bunch of skin off or something.. O, and our robot is a walking disease. Our engineer thinks its funny to wipe his blood ALL OVER the robot when he bleeds.. he gets like metal shavings and crap all in his cuts.. but hes an ogre.. wut do ya expect?

We had a kid nail himself with a hacksaw .... lots of blood.

Oh yea and our robot almost got hurt once (this years bot) .....when we accidently pulled the knock over mechnism back in too quickly and she fell over onto her back.

Hmm... no real injuries over here other than some cuts & scrapes from working on the robot. Don't know how I get them, but I just do...

Then again, I'm on the controls team, so I don't get hurt....
I get electrocuted. A few run-ins with electricity. Of course nobody was around...

Ive had too many small cuts and burns from working on the robot to count, but my most interesting injury (while not really robot related) came while I was working on a computer. I stuck my arm all the way into a tower case for some reason or other ( dont rememeber) and while pulling it out snagged a sharp corner and cut myself from my elbow all the way to my middle knuckle. The funny thing is I didnt realize it until I saw large red smears all over the case. I then realized my arm was literally covered in blood and it was all over the computer and florr (this happened in school btw). I spent the next week or so cleaning my blood off the motherboard.

oh yea, i forgot about this one...

last year an engineer was cutting some aluminum on a radial arm saw and i guess he came down to fast with the blade. it kicked back and broke his hand. it also threw a nice sized piece of aluminum into his hand inbetween his thumb and pointer finger. he didn't come back this year...

in the '00 season we were down to the last day and we were still 13 pounds overweight and i got out the hacksaw. i proceeded to cut any and every useless piece of angle off of the robot. i started getting careless and decided to cut my thumb off. i cut about 1/4" into the top of my thumb and nail. it didn't hurt at first and it bled a lot. after a few days it got real tender to touch. you can still see the scar and it hurts a little when i push on it. i prolly should have gotten stitches but i didn't. ducktape and TP work well.

injuries could be defined in many ways
 

i think that the worst injuries on my team are...

The mental anguish during the building season
which have left permanent scars on our FIRST
expiriance as minors in the world of technological
innovation.

for example... every economical factor spewed on us techies on the team. The Evil words "we can't build that, because we only have so and so's dollars" come to mind.

These are the scars that last forever more (not the
gallons of blood i lost during the last week).:D

In LA we decided that we wanted a tape measurer tether so we got our tape measure and took it apart, it was moving in and out too slow because of a rubber stopper right on the inside, so i took it apon myself to cut it off. I grabbed a untility knife blade, and started cutting. Of course I was cutting toward myself, the blade slipped out of the rubber and into my hand anout a half and inch, right on the palm bled all over out pit and didn't stop for days.

Near death for me
 

Last year at the NY Regional I came close to being stabbed by a robot. I was kneeling on the floor working on our bot and the robot next to us was turned off and the team was working on it. Their coach was sitting next to me on a labtop and they turned on their robot. As soon as the light went on it attacked us. Literally, the thing went crazy and its long arms (used for picking up the balls last year) lunged at their coach and I. I just missed their coach and it just nicked me. Right between the eyes, I received a small cut just above my nose. The reason it did not go through my head and kill me was because the opposite side of the arm hit our shipping crate. You could tell how powerful the impact was just by the dent in our crate. I am so glad that crate was there. I always wear my safety glasses in the pit now. -In that situation it may have made my injuries worse, but if it did'nt hit the crate they would have saved me.

It also sucked cause it was my birthday...

maybe i should make a poll and see how many people have seen through their eyelids, i know at least 6 on my team have, it sucks the next day like no other

ashley

Okay...I've got two

Senior year of high school...working on the bot, making some lightning holes...using one of those rather large industrial type drills, with a second level cantelieved off the side of the thing so you can hold onto it more firmly....the bit gets caught and I don't let go...nearly rips my right arm off. for the next week i could barely move my arm

last year, our head engineer was working on our arm, and was intriqued by something getting stuck. middle of a decent snow storm, decides that he wants to check "one more thing" before everyone leaves for the night. He tells coll to operate the extension on the arm, and two seconds later he flies off the chair he's standing on and hits the floor. apparently he didn't read the rules of don't put appendages in slots where extensions move, making a makeshift guillitine....severed his thumb almost completely off.....was able to get it sewn back on...and luckily has feeling in most of it...very close call.

Well, I wasn't exactly burned by a soldering iron, but I have a bunch of soldering iron stories from this year :P

[NOTE: If you are on Team 293, then do not read the following statement. Please.]

First of all, I had never soldered before. I wanted to test a retro-reflector program I wrote, though, and no one was free to solder the wires on the sensor to a connector. So, I thought I'd teach myself how to solder.

I plugged in the soldering iron and waited a few minutes for it to get hot. The table I was doing this on was messy, however, and there was a major tangle of wires. I thought that I plugged in the right wire. But I was wrong. Instead, I had plugged in another soldering iron. It took me about 5 minutes to figure this out, in which time the other soldering iron had blackened a part of the wooden (!) table.

Luckily, nothing caught fire.

And nobody noticed.

Oh, and when I did get it right, I accidentally burned a hole in the sheet that listed what outputs went to what pins in the connector :P

Somehow, I didn't get burned.

Robots + kids = bloody chunks
 

Geesh- most of these postings sound like OSHA nightmares!!!!

Our closest call was when out big arm bot "Cradle Robber" from 2000 was doing a demo to a bunch of kids. The ENGINEERS (not the kids!) were operating it and somehow torqued the arm around really fast, flipping the machine over and on top of a little kid in the audience. It sliced him on the forehead quite nicely. Frankly, hearing this I thought our program was over!! But apparently the incident was handled in due course and we survived to play two more years so far.

I always tell my guys that our machines ARE OSHA nightmares and not toys to be messed with.

It sounds like many teams should get educated in FIRST Aid!!


WC:cool:


The Brunswick Eruption- replay of 2002 game- Nov 23, No Brunswick, NJ-- Be there!!!!

Although not robot related this happened at the candian regional. I enjoy hanging my very large swiss army knife from my belt. It hangs down about 15 cm. I was jumping over the boards at the side of the rink, becasue someone was blocking the door. When I landed my knife swung arround, hitting my squarely in the right nut. I spent about 3 min in the fetal possition while people laughed at me.

The story of how i almost got a tracheotomy: Last year's robot had two large pistons pointing up with the rods out. They were used a reservoirs. We decided that it would be fun if I stood on the dolly while Aaron pushed me arround with the robot.

He hit the dolly a little hard and I fell frontwards onto our robot hittign myself on one of the rods. It hit my right on the base of the collar bone. A few more inches up and I would it would have pierced my trachea. It hit me so hard, it bruised me for a month and i still have a scar.