MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Just reading about a guy who dropped a $1.5m piece of NASA hardware. I assume we can't top that..
Nowhere near it but I know someone who's new pup chewed a rather large corner off a £30,000 Persian rug.
£7ks worth of recently restored, uninsured VW Beetle
A colleague once had a little mishap with £250ks worth of mugs, and I once sent an ad to print with the wrong mortgage rate on. Never did find out what that cost, or who ended up paying...
i've been in the plastics industry for 25 years. I've seen lots of broken mould tools and robot parts.
The biggest was a carbon fibre end of arm robot gripper and the 32 cavity mould tool. The program for the robot was corrupt and was doing odd things, not picking up correctly, putting down in the wrong place. The operator asked the techs to investigate, it then went up the technical ladder until the programmers, tooling engineers, and electrical engineers were all having their 15 minutes of fame.
Long story short, "It's fine now, give it a go".
Me: "Shall I run it through the the first cycle at 10% speed, then ramp it up once we're happy"
"No, it's fine"
Reset, start up, I'm thinking "that doesn't look right to me". Mould opens, robot moves in, mould closes on robot. BANG.
£16k on a new end of arm tool, £80 on moulding tool repairs, £12K on repair and recalibration of the robot arm. Just because someone wanted to save 1 minute not to watch the first cycle run slowly.
The line: "We're not looking to blame anyone, because we don't work in a blame culture. But who's fault was this?" was imortalised in the memory of anyone who worked there. Years later new starters were quoting it.
might have written off a prototype vehicle. 6 figures apparently.
I put a mk1 golf on it's roof after taking all weekend fixing the head gasket - around £3500
My cousin once dropped a full tray of manuka honey, not sure if it was 12 or 18 jars at around £15 each
Mines gotta be my spleen. $47k CAD
I know of someone who might have accidentally and terminally damaged a brand new (€400k) 2kW laser system for an Additive Manufacturing platform...
In the immortal words of Bart Simpson:
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Broke the tray on a scanning electron microscope at uni. Think it was worth a fair few quid.
nothing as expensive as you lot,but i threw my sony psp (2 weeks old) onto my guitar and smashed the screen in a fit of rage/tantrum.
Need it fixing? 😉
Broke the turbo in my Ford TDCi engine by forgetting to get it serviced. £800 for a new turbo initially, but then £5k for a new engine as not all the swarf was removed which killed the engine.
Note - I didn't pay for the engine, Ford did as I proved they'd ballsed up.
£7ks worth of recently restored, uninsured VW Beetle
This brings a tear to my eye. I can't imagine losing mine.
Accidentally demolished part of a barn with a Case W24C wheeled loader. The roof was resting on the bucket after I had finished. Not sure how much it cost to put right, but a few grand I'm sure.
Not me personally but someone at work (I don't think anyone ever admitted it) managed to have a $1.2 million aircraft part written off by quality due to the damage caused by not quite following the correct production process.
A 2 day old 911 Turbo. In my defence I didn't really cause it but I did park it where the large truck full of slabs could roll over it 😯
Used to work in a warehouse in Bracknell driving a fork truck. They asked me to cover at another site in Woodley so went over. The access door want very tall and I was new to it and had a very bad habit of carrying loads a couple of feet off the floor. Unfortunately there wasn't a couple of feet between the fully dropped mast and the door frame. So I took the door frame (which was also acting as a lintel) and a fair bit of wall with me as I went through it. That cost quite a bit in repairs and lost time etc. I wasn't very popular.
Once snapped the crank on my recently back in the road tear away classic mini. This in turn lunched pretty much everything else. About £4k for a replacement. Could have just brought a cheap scrapper engine but where's the fun in that?
I once reversed a 7.5t lorry into my own car.
It's got to be the guy who did the measuring for the new french trains. A £40m cock-up
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27497727 ]Linky[/url]
I've probably told this tale before on here, but here goes nothing - I finished off an already broken UPS, which in turn, turned off the IT and Telephone systems of a large bank, over a very large area - Half of Wales to be exact from about 1pm on a Friday to about the same time on the Sunday.
I managed a glance of a report that estimated the total cost as being over £100k "although the true cost may never be known".
Even though people in authority knew I did it, they either liked me too much to say anything, or were worried they'd be found more to blame than I to say anything - so I didn't get a single harsh word in my direction because of it.
Never have so many random events, occurred at exactly the right time, in right place, to the right people, to save the luckiest ****er in the world.
This is where we find out a few bankers lurk on the forum and one of them pops up with 'the global economy', a few $trillion 🙂
scruff - Member
I once reversed a 7.5t lorry into my own car.
Smooth...
My back.
mrs rocket's car practising handbrake turns
"It's coming out your wages!"
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[i]Repairs to the satellite cost $135million.[/i]
[i]A NASA inquiry into the mishap determined that it was caused by a lack of procedural discipline throughout the facility. While the turn-over cart used during the procedure was in storage, a technician removed twenty-four bolts securing an adapter plate to it without documenting the action. The team subsequently using the cart to turn the satellite failed to check the bolts, as specified in the procedure, before attempting to move the satellite[/i]
A colleague of mine started a fire which destroyed a £3 million pound recycling machine. Who'd have thought that welding over an open waste oil tank could possibly go wrong...
Russian T-series (not sure which one) battle tank. Unsure of value.
It wasn't by accident, a local had given one up during operation harvest (arms amnesty) in Bosnia and and friend and I were tasked with killing it. And kill it we most certainly did!
Did you own it with a pair of bombers?
A hayrick and several kilos of PE4 (at least half a slab and then some) if I remember correctly.
[i]a local had given one up during operation harvest (arms amnesty)[/i]
blimey, the police round here are delighted if they get a couple of Stanley knives when they have an amnesty...
😀
We had a whale of a time with the kit which was handed over. I have never seen so much small arms ammunition before or since. Crates and crates and crates of the stuff just chucked onto the back of the DAF for us to dispose of. Big thumbs up and smile from the local commander and a "DOBRO!".
I'm surprised no ones mentioned their marriage 🙂
Teeth. 🙁
VW Passat 2.0 TDI 2007
A friend of mine was running a gun crew on a naval gunnery range and they were tasked with firing rounds over a Wasp helicopter, to see how it stood up to the shock waves when rounds went over it.
You can guess what happened.
The officer in charge laid the gun in wrongly and they blasted a perfectly good Wasp helicopter to pieces
That just goes without saying Molly.
😉
Configured an ID plug incorrectly on the nightshift prior testing a GE CF6-80C2D1F aircraft engine, which meant when we ran it up in the test cell the HPT clearance control didn't function correctly, didn't cool the HPT, wiped out the shrouds and a load of HPT blades.
Cost approx 250k. Not a good day.
The officer in charge laid the gun in wrongly and they blasted a perfectly good Wasp helicopter to pieces
14,000 rivets flying in formation, the most scary ride of my life in a Wasp 😀
My first wife's heart...
🙁
I can neither confirm nor deny that I was involved with running a diesel firewater pump without opening the cooling water supply.
Repair costs to date are in the region of half a million quid, and it's still not back in one piece.
Engineering wise, nothing physical, but probably into the £00k's if not £000k's of wasted manhours following up on mistakes.
Once whilst working for a smidgen above minimum wage in a lab I destroyed a sample sell from an instrument by cleaning with the wrong solution (I used acetone, should have used soapy water, it melted the coating), knowing that a similar cell cost £30k in the other machine, and this machine hadn't been produced since at least the early 90's, I presented the remains to my boss who looked "I'm not angry, I'm just disapointed " and sent me off to try and source it's replacement.
3 phonecalls to suppliers later I'd tracked down the new manufacturers who had the old spares inventory and ordered a whole box of goodies, including two cells at £15 a pop to justify the £20 P&P! Having nursed this bit of kit through the last few months with silicon sealent and ductape trashing it turned out to be a blessing in disguise!
Sank girlfriends speed boat.. also blew up same girlfriends brothers engine in a corvette after doing donuts on her parents lawn. 2 weeks later opened a £500 bottle from her dads wine cellar which we necked to just get drunk.
I was young and drunk at the time. Surprised i didnt get a visit from some local heavies to tell me to stay away from his daughter.
I knew of a guy who'd picked up his newly restored vintage Rolls Royce from a restorers in Cambridge only to manage to flip the trailer it was on near Birtley Co Durham. I think it worth well over 200K.
Cue a trip back to Cambridge with a bent Roller.
Hmmm
Blew up a couple of hundred thousand pounds of plasma arc furnace power supply after I fixed one fault on the feedback control loop but in my smugness at fixing the first fault missed the second one. Cue massive run away event and lots of broken semiconductors. Worse still was the power thyristors then had to be made costing even more money in down time.
Whilst working as a "controller" on the railway I may have "forgotten" to tell anyone about a points failure overnight. Oh that incurred a lot of very expensive delays in the morning I can tell you. I had an extensive strong listening too whilst on the spikey chair for that one.
A brand new and freshly kitted out 3.5 litre V8 Sherpa Police riot van.........went through some very deep unseen flood water at considerable speed (wave crested the roof line) and hydra locked the gearbox and engine.....oooops.....I had to piggy back all the occupants out from the van to dry land too.
Wouldn't be so bad but I had killed my own Volvo in exactly the same spot many years previously doing exactly the same thing!!
It's fine now they've painted white lines in the centre of the road when it's flooded these days you can clearly see its flooded plus there's also a depth gauge at the roadside 😆
Suggsey are you a YouTube star?
My brother lost a drill bit at work it was the size of a small car and cost approx £3 million ( I think he isn't that keen discussing the issue) he narrowed it's location down to 5 sq km just not sure how far below the sea bed it is.
I threw a 2 day old macbook pro out the window of my apartment during a manic phase.
I had a hard time trying to explain that to the insurance company.
I was thinking the same, crankboy, though it doesn't seem to be a Sherpa
I broke a car park in central Oxford once.
Negative, no film star here, it was about 1am, pouring with rain, blues light run and showing my age, it was a Sherpa V8 twin wheel monster and weighed twice as much as that toy van in the video.....would have been mid to late 90's.
Configured an ID plug incorrectly on the nightshift prior testing a GE CF6-80C2D1F aircraft engine, which meant when we ran it up in the test cell the HPT clearance control didn't function correctly, didn't cool the HPT, wiped out the shrouds and a load of HPT blades.
can you translate? some of us don't speak geek.
Stopped A380 production at the FAL because my parts where late.
I once loaded 30 cases of eggs onto a pallet behind my lorry, got my docket signed then jumped into the cab, saw a car parked right in front of me, and reversed back right over the lot of them.
I've been reading these stories wondering if i would have something to share ine day and them i remembered....it wasn't my fault the equipment failed but it was my chemicals inside when it did. The insurance claim was over £1M.
My collarbone.
I used to work for a big Aerospace manufacturer. At the time I was there, the first prototype of the wing for a new aircraft variant had just been completed. It was being equipped with strain gauges for testing and the job had been handed to a local contractor.
They sent some poor kid who had just completed his apprenticeship. This had apparently mostly involved fitting gauges to bridge steel-work rather than to aluminium panels on a new wing which had just gone through an extensive lightening re-design, leaving many of the panels not much thicker than tin-foil.
Kid had been on-site about 2 weeks when someone noticed that, every now and then, he'd get a gauge a bit squint. So he'd just grab his trusty big flat-head screwdriver, put the end against the gauge and bang his hand on the end to get the gauge off, then glue a new one on.
He was escorted to his car while his boss was called.
25k photo mask was in a pellicle room saw some dust under a Yamarder light flicked it over with the pick and caught a Stainless steel clean room table.
Smash!
I was being trained at the time put all the bits back in the box and the guy training me took the box to the supervisor saying Andy's found a slight problem with the mask oh how we laughed when he opened the box.
You were allowed one **** up and that was mine 🙂
Another guy wrote of 100k's worth by putting them in a acid bath for a clean with the pells still on. No one laughed with that one 😯
Er, is that post available in English?
How does one value a human heart?
Well played btw molgrips.
Er, is that post available in English?
Well, I recognise most of the words, but the sequence they're in makes little sense.
25k photo mask was in a pellicle room saw some dust under a Yamarder light...
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Best I can think of that I would like to admit too is the toll barrier on the Isle of Skye bridge.
*makes mental name of whos bike fettling advice to ignore in future*
Unscrewed 4 mystery wing nuts in a bedroom on the first day in our new house.
Elsewhere a toilet fell off the wall.
simialr to above. First day in new house I unplugugged the orange fly cable in the bedroom and flooded the bathroom (macerator) I also unplugged a scary electrical tape and half plug contraption in the basement and spent the next 2 hours taking the electric gates off their hinge to get my car out!
There was a similar post a while ago where I confessed to driving over a £25k (rrp) defib in an ambulance.
Im moving in a month, thanks for the reminders to check stuff before removing / unplugging!
My Yeti SB66c frame, I'm guessing I'm not alone on that though?
Not mine but I did chuckle when BAE welded all the plates on the one of the Astute boats upsidedown.
A sugar factory.
Unscrewed 4 mystery wing nuts in a bedroom on the first day in our new house.Elsewhere a toilet fell off the wall
Althought not funny at all. I just laughed alittle 😀
Not broken,
But was working for BAE when they took over some business from Boeing about ten year ago. Went in to check on the stock valuations and instantly closed four Boeing Service Centres down for a week. NO repairs to Boeing instruments for a week at the four largest sites due to stock discrepencies.
Managed to save BAE over £6m off the purchase price due to the stock being wrong!
a condom 😡
Part true, part myth:
My uncle works at Rolls Royce, testing jet turbines. They would run all sorts of tests, vibration, extreme weather, and bird strikes. Bird strikes were done by revving up the jets, and tossing chickens in the rotors (this is true).
After a few months he gets a call from an engineer at Boeing. He says "Listen, we have a problem with the bird strike tests, every time we toss in the chicken, the engine implodes. I don't know how you guys are doing it"
My uncles response: "Guys, seriously, you have to defrost the chicken first!"
My Yeti SB66c frame, I'm guessing I'm not alone on that though?
A mate's been through 2 ASR5's. His wife backed over the first & smashed the second into the carport.
My late father was in the Royal Engineers in the early 70's and stationed in Hong Kong, anyway, he made the papers over here after driving his grader through a grave yard and being chased off by a woman with a meat cleaver apparently. A different kind of expensive i guess.
Wrote off two new CBR600's in the space of a few months.
Just reading about a guy who dropped a $1.5m piece of NASA hardware.
A job I was on was delayed because a similarly priced fuel cell was dropped as it was unloaded at the docks.
Not same price bracket but once saw two car transporters travelling in convoy from the factory loaded with new mondeos - that was until the first transporter out braked the second.
In 2008, someone stacked a B2 bomber, successfully ejecting. They're about $2bn a pop.
Put a book down on a computer keyboard hiding on top of a cabinet well above my eyeline, turning out half the lights during a Liberal Democrat/charles kennedys keynote, live TV broadcast. He took up drinking about that time. Could have been me.
Got a phone call from BBC. Awesome. Now paranoid about computer keyboards in control rooms.