Stupidly I left the props on while preparing a demo of one of my kk quads. The board malfunctioned while disarmed, props shattered and sliced most of the pad of my pinky finger right off. It took a trip to the hospital and 13 stitches to get it back on.
Finger 4 stitches in (Not for the faint of heart)
PSA: ALWAYS REMOVE PROPS WHILE TESTING AND NEVER USE BROKEN PROPS
Comments
I have just ordred a hexa, and I am new to quads.
Normal helis is no problem, you have a few seconds to react, but quads are quite more responsive...
The towel trick from Dave C sounds good. Will I burn the engines if I am not able to cut power quite quick?
We all develop some prop bite "antidotes" :) the problem is when you are tunning things up and lift off for 2 minutes, then connect to pc, then lift off again, etc, doing quick tests with small changes, those moments are when you forget all about safety and let everything as it is, and usually is when something goes wrong.
@Rui Loosening the props was one of my tactics too, until I had an unexpected spin up, one prop hit full speed, then since it was loose flew off the motor shaft and hit me, not pretty.
Now i either take them off completely, or more regularly, have the quad on the floor with a towel over the props. If any motor spins the towel gets tangled up and the worst i get is screaming motors as they cant spin up.
Obviously eye protection at all times just in case.
I'm using these Kevlar gloves when i have to work close the propellers.
I guess you can find them from some industrial equipment shops. Prices around 100$ and protects your health and pocket from very expensive tendon micro surgery.
And please dont forget, your eye balls importand and sensitive than your fingers. Use protection glasses when you working with turning parts.
Good thing I wasn't the one who approved this post. I probably would followed it to embedded the picture. I'm assuming it's not pretty, as I am not going to look. ;-)
I do a lot of flying indoors, so I wear protective glasses too. Don't want to loose an eye, as my eyesight is already iffy, as it is.
I know how you feel. I was doing some testing on a glow powered plane and had a thick, sharp prop go through my left pinky and ring. Dead of winter in korea with no doctors at the clinic. Poor Korean doctor had to trudge through the worst snow in recent Korean history! a finger tourniquet (who knew?), ten shots and a few hours of vein, artery, and finger stitching later the medical center had a brand new training video. They did save the fingers, i only have to put some extra thought into making a tight fist with my left hand.
3 parallel cuts on my arm here, not too deep thanks to my seal skin, however the scars remained. What I do now is very simple... just untight the props but leave them in place, if anything goes wrong the motor shaft slips. However, I think all of us, even those who already had an accident like this, once in a while forget about the safety rules because it's just for a "quick" test... quick tests can make this or worse.
ouch, The hospital has these new things finger bandages ( I call them finger condoms for the lack of a better name) that have a plastic tape and two gauze "condoms" that wrap over. They seem to be doing very well at keeping stuff out of the cut.
The doctor did a really good job on sewing it up, I barely notice the cut when there is no pressure on it. Even when there is the pain is minimal.
Now I just unplug one wire on the motor to avoid those type of accident (my propeller are very hard to remove)
Oh man sorry to hear that. That's exactly what 4 of my fingers looked like when I had my accident. 52 stitches for me :( . You'll be fine though, your finger might feel numb for a while, (mine still do and its been almost a year) but they will go back to normal looking in about a month. Hope you heal fast, first few weeks are pretty annoying. Some tips that come to mind:
* dont use gauze when you wrap your fingers, it hurts like hell to take it off string by string every night.
* make sure your skin doesnt grow over your stitches, that hurts too in the end.
* vicodin and a netflix account are bomb.
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