worst tech accident contest...

[shabtek]

cut through 3 wires at once with ratcheting cutters...240 short, wrecked the cutters

 

[Freq Band]

I went swimming.... right after eating. .

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[Johan]

when doing repairs many years ago, I repaired an QSC A5.1 poweramp, tested it with the lids off on the bench....everything worked perfectly..tightened everything up, put the lids back on and shiped it off to the customer...
a week later it came back with a not saying something like "Fx%"@}king amp dead..pulls fuses..megashort"
opened her up..and found a spanner, that had been mysteriously lost a week earlier, wedged inside next to the powersupply.... ..I did get the amp to work again thou...
j
I should add that I have a tendency to be a bit absent-minded...

 

[pstamler]

You young folks may never have seen a flashbulb. These were little plastic globes filled with, I think, magnesium wire; when triggered by a 1.5V battery, or better yet a discharging capacitor, they went off with a flash of light, very bright light, good for the slow films of the day. (I'll explain film later.)

Anyway, most flashbulbs had special bases; most common around our house was the #2 flashbulb, which was about the size of a walnut. But somehow my dad had gotten hold of a few rare bulbs with standard Edison-type screw bases, which meant they'd go into a regular lamp socket. Naturally I had to try it.

Remember what I said before about these bulbs normally being triggered by a 1.5V battery? Think about what one would be likely to do when powered by 117V.

It did it. Luckily I'd had the smidgen of good sense to put the bulb in the lamp with the lamp unplugged, and stand far away. Even more luckily, nothing caught fire. It made a most satisfying BANG.

Speaking of bangs, I've been reading a book called Vanilla Beans and Brodo about life in a Tuscan hill town. One of the grape-growers (the town is famous for its wine) uses a small cannon to frighten off wild boars and other pests from his vineyard.

Now, in Italy, anything that is anything has a bureaucracy to regulate it, including firing off cannons. You can only do it with a permit, issued to cover only certain hours. You also need to know about the carabinieri, a national police force that is esteemed for its professionalism but also held in a certain amount of disdain by the populace for what are viewed as elitist and perhaps militarist tendencies.

Okay, so you have this guy who fires off the cannon to scare off wild boars. Late one morning the immaculately-uniformeed carabinieri show up in an Alfa-Romeo and officiously demand to see his cannon-firing license. ("Do you have a li-cense for that minkey?" Oops, wrong story.) He produces it; they reply that there have been complaints that he's been firing off the cannon at the wrong hours, hours not permitted on the license.

They confiscate the cannon. They tell him it is a State Matter, very serious. They load the cannon into the back of the Alfa-Romeo. He protests, "But -- but --"; they silence him with a glare. They drive off. He is desolated. The cannon is a State Matter, he will never get it back, and besides...

Anyway, he walks slowly over to the coffee bar and waits. After a few minutes he puts his head down on the table as he listens to the town clock chiming noon. Just as the bells finish, there is a loud "BOOM" as the cannon goes off in the back seat of the Alfa-Romeo, still within sight and hearing. Luckily, the deafened, singed and sooty carabinieri don't drive off the mountain road.

He had tried to tell them about the timer, but they woudln't listen.

I recommend the book.

Peace,
Paul

 

[Freq Band]

[quote author="pstamler"]You young folks may never have seen a flashbulb. These were little plastic globes filled with, I think, magnesium wire; when triggered by a 1.5V battery, or better yet a discharging capacitor, they went off with a flash of light, very bright light........
Paul[/quote]

Yes, I remember those....my father had several left-overs.
I was about 12 y.o. and found out that you should not hold them whilst touching it to a weak 9v battery......"FLASH" ...it welded itself to my pinching fingers. Had to shake it off, along with some skin. :shock:

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[bcarso]

There is an amusing article in a recent Nature (10 May 2007) about chemists' penchant for synthesizing highly explosive compounds.

One quote: "Consider this warning for tetraazidomethane, a particularly wild member of the group of compounds known as polyazides, which have a general reputation for removing student eyebrows: 'Tetraazidomethane is extremely dangerous as a pure substance. It can explode at any time---without a recognizable cause.' "

Quoting the first chemist to synthesize it: "Although we had expected explosive properties of tetraazidomethane, we were deeply impressed by its destructive force."

Where is CJ anyway?

 

[mikka]

[quote author="bcarso"]Where is CJ anyway?[/quote]
Restructuring his workplace ......last I read .... :green:

 

[Emperor-TK]

I once worked with a chemist that unwittingly synthesized some azide compounds. He was working with hydrazoic acid when his apparatus suddenly exploded just as he turned his back. "But hydrazoic acid isn't explosive....ohhhhhh...that makes sense".

I had a batch of silver oxalate go up on me once while I was purifying it. Fortunately, silver oxalate is only deflagratory and not explosive (slower propagation). The only thing that happened was that I lost all the hair on my hand and forearm.

-Chris

 

[pucho812]

[quote author="mikka"][quote author="bcarso"]Where is CJ anyway?[/quote]
Restructuring his workplace ......last I read .... :green:[/quote]

I would guess CJ has a few good stories on this one topic. CJ where are you dood?

O.k. non tech related but music related personal and a really bad accident.
Met a one handed drummer a few weeks ago. As the story went, He was playing with dynamite on July 4'th one year. As he had done so many many times before. Anyway fuse went to quickly and the dynamite went off in his hand. Blowing apart his hand, shooting his thumb through his eye and leaving a bloody stump right in the middle of the forarm halfway past his elbow. Was blinded in his eye from his thumb going through it. When he healed, was working in a machine shop at the time and was able to rig together a contraption much similar to a shoulder pistol holster. The contraption would then come down over his arm to the nub and at the end had some clip/clamp likes things on it. It allowed him to hold a drum stick. He still plays music and is one of the best drummers I seen who is non famous. However aside from the drumming his work status is perminant disability and will never really have a working job again.
Good thing his band is doing well.

 

[Freq Band]

(edit, video removed)

(hehe)

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[b3groover]

I'm pretty good about safety, so I haven't had any bad accidents beyond the normal little shocks, solder mishaps, etc.

But this past summer I was installing the fixtures in my newly renovated kitchen (renovated by me of course) and also a little hallway. I went to the breaker box, and turned the breakers off for the particular circuit I'm working on. The sub-panel was recently installed by my wife's step-father (now ex-step father). He is a licensed electrician.

I go upstairs and begin to cut through the three conductor wire that is hanging out of the hallway ceiling for the new hallway light. I'm cutting all three at once.


BAM!


WTF! I almost fall off the ladder, I'm so scared by the loud bang. My cutters/wire strippers have a big hole in them. What the hell!?? I turned the right circuit off! Maybe something was mislabled. I go back down, turn the subpanel itself off, and finish the work.

A few days later I'm installing the kitchen fixtures. This time I shut the entire sub panel off. I get up on the ladder and begin cutting through the three wires for the new ceiling fan / light fixture.

BAM!


WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!?! The entire subpanel is off!!? Frustrated, I turn the entire main breaker box off and continue the work.

After wiring up everything correctly, I could not get a three-way switch set up to work. After trying everything, I finally call my wife's step-father. He comes over, checks my wiring, everything is good.

Long story short, he hooked the sub-panel up wrong and had one leg of the mains going into ground. So even though the breakers on the subpanel were off, they had 120v going through the ground at all times.

Yikes!

 

[Kit]

I went swimming.... right after eating. .

NOOOOOOOOOO!!


Im an electrician, so Ive been zapped a few times.

Mostly 400V through my hand which is okay.

Ive heard about guys who has dropped a screwdriver on HV rails..........

:shock:

After that you cant seperate clothes from skin.

Melted copper everywhere.

 

[solder_city]

i think 'quince' is getting ready to go for the title:

http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=22603

 

[cannikin]

I was cutting an old snake open to get the individual cables -- slipped and cut a 1 inch gash on the top of my finger -- 10 stitches

 

[julianzizko]

Sorry slightly OT - As an apprentice I was asked to wire up a 3 phase motor, with the bars oriented in the star position, I stupidly wired the 3 phases directly to the star point, shorting three phases together,

The breaker was mounted in an overhead distribution board with the door left hanging open, when the motor was switched on the breaker exploded most of it flew out of the board and hit someone who was working on a production line below, giving them a nasty cut on the head , they had to be sent home oops Still I got sent back to technical college for a further 3 months to brush up on electrical theory, so not a bad result :green:

Another not strictly DIY accident I heard of, when I was helping the electricity company service the 400kva step down generator in our factory substation one of the guys told me about his colleague who forgot to dust the busbars during a service and in order avoid getting told off, after the power had been turned back on, he blew on the busbars, the electricity arced through the dust and blew his head apart :shock:

 

[wtmnmf]

1)
I was repairing a TV and ran out of hands. I was holding some leads in place with my hands and wanted to power it up, so I went for the stripped mains leads with my teeth! I got a couple of millimeters away from doing it, when I realized that it was a really bad idea. I still wake up in a cold sweat over that one.

2)
I was in charge of a crew fabb'ing cables for Skywalker Ranch and we had millions of Elco pins to crimp on a machine. Well, the dies would get some metal built up on them after 30-40 hours of crimping and jam. I'd shown everyone how to fix it, but they were always coming to me to deal with it.

One Friday, at the end of a long week, the machine jammed and I was asked to fix it again. I was tired and a little annoyed, so I tore into the machine and fixed it. In order to test it with the guards off, I had had to hold a switch closed with one hand and operate the foot switch. For some reason, which I can't remember, I was holding a strip if pins in place with the free hand and I proceeded to step on the pedal. I had my foot in motion and realized that this was not going to end well, but it was to late to stop! My brain was saying nooooo and my eyes were watching the punch and die, when I saw the end of my thumb disappear.

Well, I called an end to the work week, and sent everyone down the street to the local pub to line up some scotch for me, while I stuck my thumb in hydrogen peroxide which foamed over into a great bloody mess. It was really gory! Luckily, I missed the bone. It hurt to hold the thumb behind the neck of my bass for about a year and the front of the thumb looked flat for a while longer, but now you can't tell that it was ever injured.

Don't do dangerous sh*t when tired, angry, or frustrated!

Oh, I almost forgot! When I was a little DIY'er of about six, I found my Dad's closet full of Ham radio cables and proceeded to plug them all together and then plug the end that fit in the wall socket right where I thought it ought to go. BLAM go the fuses, sparks fly, and over the knee I went. Don't, whack, you, whack, ever, whack, do that, whack, again, whack, whack. That was my only spanking, ever.

 

[bcarso]

[quote author="wtmnmf"]
Oh, I almost forgot! When I was a little DIY'er of about six, I found my Dad's closet full of Ham radio cables and proceeded to plug them all together and then plug the end that fit in the wall socket right where I thought it ought to go. BLAM go the fuses, sparks fly, and over the knee I went. Don't, whack, you, whack, ever, whack, do that, whack, again, whack, whack. That was my only spanking, ever.[/quote]

I did something like that at a slightly younger age, except the cables and other detritus were basically just electrical, out of a basket of stuff I'd been given to play with. But I had the foresight to hand the plug to my grandmother, who plugged it in without questioning.

At least there was no penny in the fuse box on that circuit. Not surprisingly, a certain atmosphere of distrust emerged from the incident.

 

[pstamler]

One time I was down in the basement and decided I needed to put a new AC socket into a box. So I turned off the breaker and started wiring.

ZOT!

The living room stereo was on the same circuit, with a couple of Dynaco Mark IV amps for which I'd built a big capacitor bank. When I turned off the breaker box, the amps were on...and the caps held enough of a charge that, when I shorted out the AC for a moment, discharged backwards through my power supply.

Hmmm....now that I look at that story, it doesn't make sense. How could it discharge through reverse-biased diodes? Well, SOMETHING went ZOT through my screwdriver but didn't blow the fuse, and there wasn't anything else on that circuit...

Another day in the same basement. There was a ceiling light bulb, on a junction box, which didn't have a switch; you'd turn it on and off by screwing the bulb in and out. It always felt kind of spongy. One day the bulb burned out, and while I was replacing it I thought I'd open up the box and find out why it felt spongy. I found out, all right; the socket wasn't screwed onto the box at all. The only supports it had were the two wires. Which were uninsulated.

When you buy a house from an octogenarian, ask if he's done his own wiring. Then ask if he's a licensed electrician. If the answers are "Yes" and "No" respectively...don't buy the house.

Peace,
Paul

 

[JohnRoberts]

Any accident you can still talk about is a good one.

I recall a few years reading a list of accidental electrocution deaths, and the majority of them were not amateurs but engineers, technicians, and electricians who were a little too relaxed around dangerous things.

I hate that "oh Sh__" moment when everything shifts into slow motion, and you know something bad is going to happen. But it's good we can laugh about it in hind sight.

JR

 

[Junction]

Was drilling a hole in an aluminium panel to mount a switch, had the panel in the left hand and finger tips touching the rear side of the panel to establish stability whilst holding the drill in the right hand and pushing with reasonable force, the drill broke thru to the other side and continued to drill straight into the end of one finger tip until the drill hit the finger tip bone. I ripped out the drill and sticking out of the end of my finger was a nice curly piece of meat, looked like that short curly pasta.

Lots of blood, excrutiating pain, resulted in lots of screaming and 4 letter words.

Michael