First Injuries
 

Ok. I'm sick, I'm morbid, and there is definately something wrong with my brain. I just want to hear about various injuries people have sustained while working on the robot. I have many good ones myself such as almost getting a tracheotomy from our robot last year. In fact I have scars from every robot I have built. I literally put some of myself into each of those robots

I want to hear your injury stories. How have you hurt yourself or how has other people's stupidity hurt you?

Here's one to get people started. A near injury actually. One of the in-experienced (read: stupid) members of our team was having difficulty making a dimple in the table with a punch, in order to get the drill started. The table was coated in steel and we were drilling through it to mount a machine.

He decided he could hit the punch harder if he used both hands. So he took a rag and wrapped it arround the punch to hold it upright. Then he took the small 9lb. slege and wacked the punch with both hands. He didn't hit it right on and the punch flew across the room missing my head by about half a foot. It hit the wall point first and took a bit of the (concrete) wall out. I was really too stunned to be mad.

I wonder what effect a high velocity punch would have on the human cranium..

Robot-induced injuries
 

At the Viriginia State Fair last year, my team was letting all the rookies drive. It turned out to be a bad idea... the hammer to Peacemaker was ripped off our robot by two girls who decided it would be cute to try and lift up one of the mid-field rails while moving forwards at full speed. Anyways...

Peacemaker develops a problem with his treads halfway through the Fair. I can see the right tread starting to slip off, so I climb over the field barriers to investigate. The rookie driver was warned by 3 different people to stop moving at this point, while I try to pop the treads back on. Apparently he got twitchy and moved the robot forward as my hands were in the robot. My left pointer finger was sucked into the drive pulley of our robot's treads (I'm still thankful that we used a belt that year, opposed to the chain-driven design that would not have spared my finger). The rookie apparently did not understand my yells to move backwards so I could get my finger out, and twitched forward some more. At this point a veteran team member nearby shoved him out of the way and backed up the robot, then we both went off to find medical attention. The rookie never showed up to one build season meeting. I was left with a flat finger for a week and a bad-looking fingernail for 3 or 4 months.

That's been my only severe robotics-related incident... the Mech Techs have never really had any problems with tools or anything like that, so everything's fine there. Only a few standard cuts and bruises that seem to appear out of thin air.

yet another Mech Tech story
 

Well, this one was a near injury they have yet to let me live down....

Last year during the build season, I was drilling holes into the frame of the cage for our electronics and pneumatics so we could bolt the frame together. I pulled the drill out of the hole, the bit was still spinning. Somehow the bit ended up twisted into the leg of my jeans. I didn't have anything worse than a large scratch on my leg, but I really scared the engineers in the room. They tried to pull the drill out, but it went in further. They ended up putting the drill in reverse to pull it out. I definitely had to explain that one to my mom when I came home with a large hole in side of the knee of my jeans. Still have that pair of jeans, they're my "drill pants"...

~Melissa

Last year I was playing arround with one of the tension springs that was in the lab. I was unwinding it as far as it would go and letting it go and snap back. I didn't notice that every time it snapped back, it was moving so fast it cut my hands. Finally I noticed that the spring was getting wet. I looked at it and it was COVERED in blood! So were my hands. i had about 6-7 cuts that were bleeding and dozens more that were just superficial. There was so much blood that it looked like i had hit a major vessel.

Well every time the battery needs replacing in our bot someone (usually ends up being me) has to reach in and around a few things to get at it. Then when the velcro finally lets go my hand goes flying into the corner of some extruded aluminum...Did that oh 20 times or so before we moved the battery...

Verticle mill, milling some motor mounts, snapping bits occasionally, they go flying accross the shop usually...Once it didn't make it accross the shop because it found the side of my head first...luckily it hit me sideways, so i was ok (i'm here, aren't i? lol)

Again on the mill, except this time drilling out rather large holes, that aluminum gets dang hot...I forgot about that once as I went to pick the freshly drilled piece up...my hand then went flying and i banged the side of the mill pretty hard - double wammy.

Again w/ the mill (can u tell I am the only person on my team that is a good Miller...lol) those dang metal splinters...Got more of them than I can count...

None of those are terribly major - but annoying none the less.

i've never been really injured, other than the usually cut up hands from working on the robot, you know...
sharp metal objects + skin = cuts

last year at nationals, i remember someone on the team pitted next us cut the tip of their finger off. apparently he got it cought in the chain. there was blood everywhere.

You mech boys can't have all the fun!

Im amazed no one's posted with some run ins with hot soldering irons. I've had plenty of those... My favorite burn of all time was one that I swear was a picture perfect map of the hawien islands on my hand. You could make it out for weeks afterwords.

I still don't know how that happend, one second the iron is in my hand, the next it's rolling on top of my hand, and then its on the floor and I'm screaming bloody murder. Funny how that is...

Oh, and never drop a battery on your foot, they're kinda heavy.

-Andy A.

free blood with every order
 

Gosh I couldn't even list all the stupid things that have happened ... but I can give you the most hilarious one.

Our team took some of the college kids on the battlebots team that had never really built anything out to the shop. A guy on our FIRST team took the tip of his finger off with the bandsaw, not too bad, we've all done it. Anywho, one of the chicks freaks out and runs outside throwing up like no other, apparently she really didn't like blood, after a few more incidents she quit all involvement with robotics. Kinda sad, but we all did laugh a little.

asher

One of our team members picked up a soldering pen by the hot end. Twice within a span of 3 days actually. I wonder what the average leaning curve one hot things, is for lab rats? Probably slightly above 1.

Here are three (two injuries and one ALMOST)

1) One of the team members was using the soldering iron, and he hit it off of the table. common accident. Then in all of his cat reflexes he grabs it before it hits the ground:D Of course he grabs it by the actual Iron part. Ouch.

2) a Simple request I had for another team member. "Yo, throw me over the drill" we were all pretty much sitting on the carpet working on whatever, I had to put some screws into the ramp from last year when we were making it. The first person I asked ignored me, then the second person, in all of his Senior intelligence decided that he would fulfill my request to the letter, so of course the next thing I know there is a Battery Powered, airborne, coming at my head! I moved away as fast as I could but it still got me, right in the thigh! I had a hole IN my thigh! I could see bone I swear!! luckily it didn't hurt much after the initial shock and it didn't bleed too much. Still I use that incident as a "Remember when you threw that drill into my leg, yeah, I think you can drive me home, you owe it to me"

3) Last year our bot had a reallly big Claw to pick up the big balls, and our was of course pneumatic. Well it happens that pivot points, leverage, and unregulated pistons make things move fast. Well we didn't have any flow control valves on the claw when we made the prototype. The first time we tried it a few of us gathered around to see! Well one person got a little too close and the claw moved so fast and with so much power, it made him deaf for the next hour in his one ear. Ya see we failed to notice that when it closed it would end up being mere millimeters away from this certain members ear, if it would have been any closer we all swear it would have taken off his ear!

Um....Once the college kid on our team had a run in with the soldering iron and it hurt her hand....

When we were getting the rough spots out of the holes in the plastic sheets on our robots we were using razor blades...I sliced my fingers a few times doing that...nothing major....

Then people sometimes get the welder's tan....

Only person to actually hurt themselves is our mentors through various stuff....

That is all I can think of...

Oh, soldering irons... duh...
 

Ooh boy, the reason I didn't include soldering irons in my post is because there are so many incidents involving them, myself, and a senior last year named Mark...

Last year we were working on soldering our control board, and it was a several day process. Mark had his own soldering iron, so he had to take it home every day. However, it had a cardboard box, so he obviously had to let it cool before it went in the box. His favorite technique of determining whether it was cool or not - touch it to your palm.

"Hey mark! Is it cool yet?"
"Hang on... let me check..."
*YELP*
"Yeah, it's still hot."

I removed my left pointer finger's fingerprint while working with a soldering iron and a hot-glue gun. I accidently brushed the soldering iron with my finger while getting up from the desk, realized I had to finish something quickly before it cooled down, hot-glued a part, and then brushed my finger against the hot glue, which stuck to the previously soldered part of my finger. Ouch.

Last fall when we were working on our fall project, 2 rookies were working on a robot arm, and one was making adjustments to the arm, and the other one was adjusting the code....


well this kid downloaded the code into the robot while the kid was working on the arm and then the arm went nuts due to the fact that this kid put a wrong value in for something and the arm went completely haywire.....

Well the injury that came out of it was that the kid who was working on it got a nice size chunk ripped off of the palm of his hand (near the wrist)...some kids learmed some safety lessons that day...

hmmm...we had to backdrive our lift chain by hand after a match to get to a ball wedged into our chassis...and my fingers got pulled up in between the chain and the sprockets...talk abou ta painful experiance...

I'll add some more details to DJ's story....

This arm was actually the robot arm from our 1999 robot (yes the big lexan one, pretty powerful), and after it got done the arm was twisted like a pretzel....:)

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.

Cutting a piece of plywood on a radial arm saw I managed to take my right thumb cleam off. (For those of the more morbid type it was actually stuck in the saw) Also sliced half way through my index finger. Luckily the doctor was able put everything back where it was supposed to be.

Hibbert: Oh, no, no. The fans will whoop it up with that leg tonight -- you now, drink beer out of it and so on -- but, uh, it'll turn up in the morning, and I'll sew it back on.

I blame this one on Wolfe, but only b/c I won't see him and can get away with it :)
 

Well aside from the million minor injuries Kathleen managed to get, we actually did REALLY well on the injury scale: only ONE slightly serious burn. Lucky me got it when I was melting the end of a nylon rope, and not really paying attention, so when it caught on fire I didn't notice. So not only was I an idiot then, I proceeded to be even more of an idiot when Alan told me it was on fire and I decided to shake it out, and blow on it. All well and good, but I blew the hot nylon ON to my hand. Lemme tell you that stuff sticks and BURNS. It was a second degree burn (I have a cool scar!), and that was the worst injury we got.

I just saw it burning while you were holding it. i assumed you knew since I said to myself " Self, noone could be stupid enough not to realise they are holding something while it is burning. Could they?" Apparently both me and self were wrong.

Oh yeah?! Well...

YOUR MAMA!! ha!

Actually your mum is really nice... uhm need better comeback

Well at least I don't steal remote controls! What a WEIRD habit if I do say so....

We didnt have too many injuries, a couple really stupid could have been fatal mistakes though. Me and another guy were using a lathe and it used an allen wrench to tighten the chuck. Being wasted as we were from all nighters for the last couple of days, we left the wrench in the chuck without noticing it. As we start up the lathe, it is shot into a window behind us, and luckily didnt impale us in the head, or break the window. On another all nighter towards the end of the build period, I was cutting something on a bandsaw using a pair of visegrips to hold it. stupid me picks it up and immediately burns 3 fingers on my hands, and I can tell you id rather be cut than burned any day. it burned for DAYS. One of our advisors was sitting under one of the arms on the robot when it was turned on, and got whacked in the head, and got cut up. Luckiliy no one killed themselves during build!