i have a question
if we arent allowed to cut, grind, weld, drill or use almost any power tools in the pit any more
why do we have to wear safety glasses??
this year even though we werent using the equipment… we had it under the table put away
they made us take them out of pit
its getting kinda weird
My safety glasses got covered in lithium grease after a generous application and test run of our ball feeder gearbox. This didn’t involve any power tools and I’m sure my eyes wouldn’t have been in the best condition if I didn’t have my safties.
You can never take enough precautions when it comes to safety. Please, be prepared for anything.
Tom makes a great point, and another one to consider involves simply moving the robot. This year, there didn’t seem as many prevalent appendages, and the game pieces weren’t too violently damaging to ones person. However, last year’s robots often had arms, and the tetras were always swinging.
You may not expect a situation to be unsafe, but your body will regret it when you lose your eyes. Just wear your safety glasses. They can be stylish, too!
I always where safety glasses. Well… my glasses are safety approved but I still wear side sheilds. Today I reinforced this issue when my Dremel too’s metal cutting blade shattered and hit me in the jugular and eyes. Thank God the blades aren’t serrated or I might not be typing this right now. I’m being serious too. Safety is nothing to mess around with. I advise wearing them in the stands sometimes too. I was hit with a team flag once. Anyways… this is a question that shouldn’t need to be asked. Anytime there are fasteners, high schoolers, and motors involved. Something is bound to fly off and hit your eyes. Wear your safety glasses!!!1
Have I proven my point yet?
At what regional did you experience these rules? No cutting? No drilling? No power tools? No grinding and welding is understandable but I’ve never heard of no cutting and no drilling rules. I’ve used a drill, bandsaw, and drill press, etc in the pit space many times. I’ve even seen teams with a milling machine in their pit space. One thing I think FIRST should rule out though is circular saws in the pit space. I think that gets a little dangerous.
Anyway, I use to be your way, thinking “why the heck do I need these? I’m more prone to cutting off my finger because I can’t see through these darn things” but then I changed. I wear regular glasses all the time. I didn’t used to wear safety glasses. Then I realized just how many times my regular glasses saved my sight and I realized how easy it would have been for the flying piece of metal or whatever to enter on the side of my glasses and I thought I’d better start wearing safety glasses.
I’ve been in numerous situations of no apparant danger where glasses of some sort have ended up saved my eye(s) for some reason or another.
Now, I will admit, if I’m doing something that I need a really clear view of, which presents no real danger to my eyes, I will remove safety glasses and use my real glasses only to get a better/closer look. But some kind of glasses are always necessary.
I used to even put my face inches from a lathe chuck at 600 rpm without safety glasses but then I started to wonder what might happen if I accidentally left the chuck key in there or if the workpiece came loose or if the tool hit the chuck or something and now I wear the safety glasses (over my regular glasses.)
It is better to wear them and never need them than to not wear them and go blind. Generally speaking, blindness is not (yet) a recoverable injury.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and I too have had a Dremel cutoff wheel shatter and hit my glasses. Luckily that was after I was “converted”
Just because you’re not using power tools in your pit doesn’t mean the team next to you has everything put away! You’d be amazed how far a piece of shattered dremel-disc can fly!
During the build season, I was teaching a student about chains and told her to remove the masterlink. She used a screwdriver to pry it off, and when the piece came loose it would have hit her in the eye - had she not been wearing safety glasses. Before that day, she never understood why I was so diligent that students (and mentors alike) always wear safety glasses when working on robot parts - no matter how large or important - she gets it now. 
A mentor this season was working underneath the robot, tightening something on our transmissions, when a long-lost blot fell from somewhere. His first words after getting hit with it were, “Man! Good thing I had my safety glasses on - that would’ve gone right in my eye!” I’ve also been a victim of dremel blade shrapnel and it’s not fun!
In our pit (and in the pits, in general, at any event my team has attended) there is always drilling, grinding, sawzalling, dremeling, aluminum shavings all around, tools ever-present, etc. Even if it doesn’t seem there is an immediate, pressing need to wear your safety glasses, the potential for disaster (and eye loss!) is lurking around the corner. Don’t be a victim - wear your safety glasses!
This practice has evolved from the workplace with both regulatory agencies (OSHA, et cetera) and financial agencies (insurance companies, et cetera) pushing companies to adopt strict “blanket” safety policies.
Long ago, it was recognized that requiring all employees and visitors on the “shop” floor to always wear safety glasses removed the chance that an unprotected person would inadvertently wander into an area where a hazardous operation was taking place and be hurt. It also removes the “judgment” factor: “I didn’t think it was all that dangerous”.
Bottom line: If it did not result in measurable differences in casualties, companies would not pay for the glasses.
Last word: As “handicapped accessible” and non-discriminatory as we think we have become, no one will hire a blind engineer…
Regards,
Mike
I am a huge fan of safety glasses. In our pits there is always something going on, and accidents happen. I am accident prone, insanely so, and safety glasses have saved my vision. So even though they may seem like a hassle, they are really good. Next time you don’t want to wear them, just look around at what people are doing and watch how many things are flying around (and that includes robot parts and tools)
The easy answer? For when my students call my name, I turn around and am pummelled with 3 poof balls.
The real answer? Because you are working with wayyyyyy too much stuff that at any second can go ::boing:: and wack you in the eyes.
Simple answer…
You only have two and they don’t grow back. Next question?
Safety glasses are frickin sweet. why NOT wear them?
And they do help alot by savein’ your eyes from misc things hitting them AND sometimes poofballs 
So, wear or be square.
DarkerCrimson, where did you experiance those rules?
Safety Glasses represent the pits at a FIRST competition,
i asked the same question at my first regional competition, and at the end of the day i found pieces of metal embedded in them from sources of which i was clueless. There is also the possibility that a part could go flying from tension, chemicals could squirt into your face, or the possibility that you could walk into a protruding object.
either way, safety glasses aren’t too much of a hassle, and they should be worn whether you believe they are necessary or not, just in case something does go wrong.
Each robot in the pits is allowed to have up to 2HP of electic motors, plus the energy stored in the pnuematics, and any compressed spring mechanisms
and the team spaces are only 10 feet apart. That is a lot of powerfull experimental machinery running / testing / debugging / breaking / fixing in confined quarters!
I got poked in the face by someone carrying a banner on a pole. It missed my safety glasses, but was close.
I invested in a pair of cheaters http://www.duluthtrading.com/search/searchresults/87544.aspx
Now I have no excuses…
Nail this into your head: Safety glasses prevent small objects, sometimes at high velocities, from damaging your precious eyes. Ever priced an eye lately?
Assuming your regional was an exception, they usually allow the following:
-grinding using Dremel bits, NOT angle grinders or bench grinders.
-hand drill, both corded and cordless, are allowed. Just as long as you are not abusing it, like using a 4" hole saw on a 1/4" drill.
-sawing with a hacksaw, jigsaw, or reciprocating saw. No bandsaws, including portable bandsaws.
Keep in mind that you way not be actually doing anything, but you neighbor next to you may be shooting a staple gun for fun. :eek: In a perfect world everyone would act in such a safe manner that we would not need to wear safety glasses, but we aren’t in a perfect world, are we? Wear COMFORTABLE safety glasses or else I’ll bite your head off.
What came first: the student or the mentor?
Safety glasses deflected a plastic cable tie that one of our students was cutting. Would have hit me in the eye.
I have been hit by broken dremel bits, drill bits, jig saw blades, flying screws, robots, poof balls, tetras, and all sorts of stuff. The biggest reason I still have my two eyes is because of my goggles.
And I wasn’t even the one to break most of the bits, blades etc! (I think my team is out to get me… 
)
i love wearing my safety glasses. i wasn’t even the safety guy on the team and was yelling at my teammates to get them on when they didnt have them, or when we were entering the pit area.
the only problem i experianced was the constant fogging up. i sweat like a pig. and i have long hair. the top would get foggy and i couldnt see most of the field when i looked up from getting a ball. and after every match i was grabbing for my autodesk bandana (thank god for those things) to wipe away all the perspiration.
Everyone above me has given great reasons for wearing safety glasses.
My dad always tried to show me how to be safe when I was little, and it has benefited me greatly. He is in charge of safety (among other things) at his work (excavating contractor), and he always made sure I had safety glasses, hearing protection, and the like, when I was working on stuff around home. The hearing protection is second nature when I mow the lawn or operate large equipment, as are the safety glasses whenever working at the shop at home or school, as well as FIRST events. I did have, among others, a dremel wheel explode on me and those things really do fly! There is no excuse for stubbornness or laziness. Long story short, if you can’t take the second to put safety glasses on, you have no business in the shop, or anywhere else they are required (FIRST events).
-Chris
Most of the folks who don’t like their safety glasses are wearing cheap ones. Those $1.98 specials will protect your eyes, but they slightly distort your vision and cause a headache. Or they fit wrong and hurt your nose/ears/temples. Or they fog up…
The point is: Cheap Glasses are just that. If you got them for free, expect to get what you paid for.
Invest $10 in a hallf-decent pair of safety glasses, and (believe it or not) after a short while you will literally forget they are on. In one of our factories it is mandatory to wear glasses all the time - even in the cafeteria (!) - so you never see folks with cheap glasses. Good Glasses are just that.
Don