Near-death experiences or injuries during build season?

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

Happened to me two days ago... Hazardous metal 'keychain' ring on a drill press chuck key... Piece of the metal ring sticking out and as I go to use the key, the piece sticking out dives into my pointer finger all the way down to the bone. Thankfully it wasn't rusty.

Rust isn't a problem; tetanus is.

Tetanus is caused by a bacterium found in soil. One way to make nails and implements rusty is to stick them in the soil and leave them there for a while. By the time they get rusty, they've frequently been exposed to tetanus.

[jdunston94]

last year as we were prototyping our swerve modules, one of our jags fried into the "On" position, sending the robot chasing our soon to be primary driver across the shop, now looking back on it, it seems that the bot realized it wouldn't have another shot at pay back for high speed collisions.

[MAldridge]

ONLY coding mistake I will ever admit to:

In 2011 (Logomotion) I was working on some line following code. I was having a problem with some latency in the system tripping a watchdog and so *ahem* removed the safety thread that handles timeout functions. (For those interested, it is in the advanced pallet under motors) I told everyone to stand clear, and hit enable. By the time I got over to where the E-Stop had fallen, it had run over one mentor and penned a student against a wall.

Eventually, I discovered that it was a case of a misplaced decimal that was sending the robot into an undefined state. Now, I have learned why most teams put their robot on blocks while testing new code.

[Muffinz]

I was working on a piece for the robot at my work (A machine shop) and not thinking turned the lathe on with the chuck key still in. The machine was set to 1000 sum-odd rpm. thank fully the key just fell out but it could have been a lot worse. I broke my number one rule which is always have a hand on the Key. since then i have payed attention a tremendous amount more.

[BJT]

In 2006 we were testing different angles for our shooter. the wheels were pretty much direct drive from a big cim, and the 6 x 8 plate above it was zip tied to a shaft so we could easily try different angles. on one attempt the plate contacted the wheels, sending it straight up right past my head. I don't think anyone even knew what had happened until it hit the 30 foot ceiling and was on it's way down.

[Ernst]

I was driving a robot at an outdoor event, with little kids running everywhere. I turned my back for a second to grab my water bottle, (liquid near the driver station!?) and when I turned around, there was a kid mashing arcade buttons, almost chomping other kids' heads with a giant claw.

[Clark Pappas]

Left a mill handle on top of a mill
Left chuck keys in several times
Accidentally closed a battery circuit with one of the pre-made cables in the KoP
Dropped a robot on myself
Have had various objects graze me flying by into a wall
Fell down the stadium stairs at the Las Vegas regional (Ok, not near death, but it hurt xD)
Among various other dumb things I've done/still do


Yep, Im totally an example of good safety practice

[PAR_WIG1350]

Once our primary mentor was using a belt sander to deburr a decently sized aluminum bracket. It got loose and flew >10 feet and missed his son's head by inches. If I remember correctly, the only reason it didn't hit him is because he had just bent down to look at something in/on the robot.

Originally Posted by dellagd

My friends laptop is a piece of *$#%, despite the fact that is has an i7 even though it is 1.5 years old. It is electrically unsound, so if we touch him while he uses the trackpad, he will be shocked.

I'm sure it hurts, as the sound was quite audible, but wow was that a hilarious day.

Sounds like he spilled something (probably hot) on it or otherwise damaged it. I would look into touchscreen screen protectors. either that or something has come loose internally.

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

One of my friends also had a lathe chuck come loose, again on one of the high-powered lathes at the same shop. The part guard kept the 50lb chuck from running him over. A post-mortem by the shop's lead tech found that the chuck was faulty.

How fast was that going at the time? I can imagine it made quite a noise when it crashed.

[DampRobot]

Just today I was drilling some polycarb. Although none of it really had "death potential," it still had "break-things-including-yourself potential".

I was using a hand drill to make some holes in some polycarb panels for limit switches. Naturally, I was using a 1/8" drill bit as an end mill to enlarge my holes. This obviously had the potential to snap the tiny bit in half, so I decided to take a step back from the problem and try something safer.

I managed to find the dullest 17/64ths drill bit in the shop to enbiggen the holes, and proceeded to wander it all over the bottom of the sheet like it was ice skating. After getting the hole started, my friend decided that the drilling was going a bit too slow, so he decided to hold the polycarb flat where I was drilling. The whole time our mechanical lead was telling me to "push, push!"

So. Lessons learned. Polycarb is slippery. My friend almost got a rather large diameter piercing in his hand. And don't listen to the mechanical lead.

[mathgeek0001]

A voltage divider for our LED Ring tried to set our programming team on fire

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by PAR_WIG1350

How fast was that going at the time? I can imagine it made quite a noise when it crashed.

He was machining a small piece of aluminum, so I think it was going 1,000-1,200 rpm. This was on a 7-10hp lathe.

[Kevin Selavko]

Yesterday we were working on our bridge lowering device, and I had just plugged it into the jag. As I turned on the robot, I told my mentor to move back because he was in the way of the arms motion. As he moved back(before the robot even connected to the computer) the arm came crashing down right past his face. This is after our robot decided to take a swan dive off of the table when we were only testing sensors

[cire]

In 2005 we had a spring loaded plunger as a kind of shock for our arm that flipped out at the start of the match. When setting it for the first time the spring was probably twice as long and twice as stiff as it should have been. A fellow student and I worked together to compress it and pin it so it didn't come out, but something slipped and the inner portion launched 20 feet and hit the shop ceiling with some power, missing both of our heads by inches. I also got numerous cuts and scratches in 2005 due to working too fast without regard to safety... Since then I have been averaging about 1 scratch every 2 years or so.

[pfreivald]

At the risk of being a buzz-kill, this thread is disturbing. It seems to be a glorification of the excitement of poor safety practices.

"May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse for a reason.

We on 1551 have never had a near-death experience, nor even one experience where "oh, crap, that should have gone down differently*" has ever occurred. We like it that way, and the rest of you should, too. This thread is an insurance agent**'s nightmare.



*with regards to safety. Fashion is another matter.
**and carrier -- like your school, and FIRST.

[Siri]

In 2008, we left our battery holder to a little too late in the design, resulting in a setup that required holding the robot in midair (humans or sawhorses), sliding underneath it, and awkwardly wrenching the 13.5lb battery down on your head. The robot never actually fell, but the sickening sound of a sawhorse slipping beside my head still haunts me on occasion.
[EDIT]How it won't happen again: We're smarter now. Our battery cases are actually rather elegant these days, and if we ever have to get under the robot, we both support it and have people hold the supports/robot. Mostly though, we design better access points and maybe turn it sideways.[/EDIT]


In 2009, that darn Lunatic managed to go crazy on us once. E-Stop/disable failed (I didn't even know this was possible), so I got the lovely task of sprinting up to a haywire robot and sticking my hand inside for the Main Breaker before it ran over someone more important than me.
[EDIT]No one knows how or why this happened. I'm endeavoring to make our switches easier to reach, but I honestly have no clue what this was.[/EDIT]

Other than that, the worst I've done is be the idiot rookie that decides to hold an aluminum plate in a drill press while drilling a 1/4" hole. C-clamps, people, C-clamps!
[EDIT]We now have tons of clamps and are religious about using and teaching students to use them.[/EDIT]

I also got beaned in the head (one too many times, or some my friends tell me) by our very heavy, very unwieldy 2007 arm. Hurt like heck every competition and made me bleed once or twice, but nothing crazy. I figured it was payback for being the not-so-gentle arm driver.
[EDIT]We're definitely safer in the pits, but it also helps that we're more intelligent about arm design. I believe the issue in 2007 was a faulty drive (it would fall down randomly on the field as well). We haven't made this mistake since, but if anyone is ever under something, someone else is holding that something. Our "somethings" are also lighter nowadays, for many reasons.[/EDIT]

[EDIT]Also, I'm posting here, so hopefully someone will see this thread and remember to be safe in their own situations.[/EDIT]