What was your last near death experience

[Chaotic42]

Haven't heard back from her, but she said the officer knew it was kind of a no-fault situation, but he was required to ticket somebody, so she drew the short straw for blocking traffic or whatever.

Bleh, that's a stupid rule. Most of the time you have no way of knowing that you'll get stuck in the intersection and a lot of cars, especially around here, literally leave one or more car lengths between them and the car in front of them at red lights. I'm always super conservative about crossing an intersection when I think I might get stuck in it and people always barrel past me when I don't go through.

 

[madoka]

Oops. Wrong thread.

 

[boomerang]

How about potential near death experience?

I got hired onto an apprenticeship as a Die Maker. For those unaware, dies are the tools that stamp out sheet metal parts and in this case, for cars. Dies can be small (small parts - duh) or huge for, you guessed it, huge parts. In this case we're talking about huge parts. The die weighed about 60,000 pounds. The upper half of the die is bolted into the ram of a stamping press and the lower half is bolted into the bottom.

So, I was given a task that required me to crawl in between the halves and work overhead. This was not at all uncommon. I was supposed to be working with an experienced journeyman but was not paired with one by the boss. I was just given the job to do. The environment was one completely new to me which made me unaware that I was supposed to stop the motor on the press, block the die halves open with provided equipment and put a lock on the press to keep it from being started.

Being unaware of these safety procedures I did none of that. I was inside the die with the press running and someone unaware could have cycled the press or an electrical or even mechanical fault could have cycled it. A journeyman did show up while I was inside and pointed out my potential life ending mistakes.

All that would have been left of me had that press cycled would be a blob of pink foam and some tattered remnants of coveralls.

 

[highland145]

All that would have been left of me had that press cycled would be a blob of pink foam and some tattered remnants of coveralls.

Is that a problem? P&N says absolutely not.




I'd miss you though.

 

[NuclearNed]

I'm pretty embarrassed by this...

One of the utility poles I used for my climbing wall was massive - based on a piece of it that I cut off, I estimate that it was nearly 2000 lbs. When I finally got it lifted & in its hole, I measured it to be sure that it was all the way in. Based on my calculations, it was in 5 1/2 feet, which was perfect.

The chain that I used to lift the pole was still attached way up high, so I played around on the chain (climbed it, took some swings on it, etc.). A few days later, I used another chain to attach it to my truck so I could straighten the pole up. When I pulled the pole with the truck, it dropped into the hole approximately 2-3 feet more. In other words, the pole wasn't nearly as deep in the hole as I had thought. The realization of that has given me a shiver or two.

 

[Squisher]

Alright I'll piggyback on boomerang's story, the closest I came to killing myself was trying to lower an upper die weighing like 10 tons onto a lower die. I was having problems because the guide pins were just way too tight, but that is the nature of trim dies, they need to be right on the money because uppers must pass by lowers within .002" and you're trimming all around the outside of the part. In most cases when an upper gets stuck going down on the lower you leave a little slack in the chains and then use a heavy pry bar to bounce the corner that is too far down up and then the dies will mate. This time I was having problems so I lowered the chains some more and then some more. When it finally dropped it dropped like 1 1/2" and the 2" X 2" X 6' long pry bar that looked kinda like a shepherd's hook came up like 3 feet and hit me right in the cheek and knocked me out onto my back on the floor. I came to in a couple seconds and jumped up and looked around to see who saw me and no one did. It was quitting time so I punched out and went home thinking I got away with it. Next day I came in looking like I had been in a car accident and I had to fess up.

And another:

I had this happen to me once running a WWI vintage slotter (it still had its war tags on it) when I was an apprentice. A slotter cuts the keyway for something that goes on a shaft
see here:

It takes a hellacious cut the full width of the flat end of a tool bit. Well, this slotter being so old it had a ton of sloppiness to it (backlash) and I had my head right down next to the cutter while it was moving up and down so I could see it cut to a layout line. I turned the feed wheel and nothing happened and so I turned some more and some more, then I thought maybe someone had locked the travel. I reached down without looking and with my head still right down by the cutter and released the lock on the travel. I guess I had been winding up all that play in the machine like a spring and when I released the lock the cutter advanced like 1/8 of an inch at once rather than maybe .010" that I wanted. Having that 3/4" wide high speed steel cutter move that much came as shock to young Squisher and I turned my head to watch that broken piece of cutter fly like a bullet toward the 50 foot ceiling and over the crane beams and out of sight. I'd guess that cutter probably went 200-300 feet considering the velocity. I looked around and no one saw what happened so I went upstairs and took a shit to collect myself.

EDIT: btw this is cross posted from that other place. I didn't actually type all this out this morning