Finger vs. Pressure Washer **Warning, graphic picstures**

[biosurfer1]

I thought that since no one else would step up and teach PPOT how to NOT properly use a pressure washer, here is my contribution:

1. Make sure you're not wearing gloves
2. Be VERY stupid and believe you can hold a wash mitt and clean it with the pressure washer
3. Let pressure washer slip in your hand and almost take off pinky when it hits the finger for less than 1 second.

And to make sure I get my point across, here is a visual of what will happen if you follow my easy steps:



What the picture doesn't show is the pain my finger is in. Not right when it happened, no way, it gave me a sense of "it might not be that bad"...no the pain came about 20 minutes later when my brain caught up to the fact that I almost cut off my damn finger.

Yes, I know I was stupid, I have washed the mitt this way before and apparently have gotten lucky all those other times. Luckily I had a fairly wide tip on or I might be writing this from the ER with my pinky tip in ice!

How messed up is this...my first thought was to get a picture for PPOT right after it happened

[fastfredracing]

I think you may be doing it wrong. Ouch!. We all slip once in a while.

[Laneco]

OUCH!!!!!

Hurts to just THINK about...

angela

[fastfredracing]

At least he knows it was clean!

[rfuerst911sc]

Was at Home Depot one day when they were doing a demo with pressure washers, they were cutting oak pallets with the pressure washer. Instant respect from me !

[biosurfer1]

Yep, I should have known better. We had a 4000psi version at the dealership I worked at as a detailer (owner was a "bigger is better" type) and with the smallest angled tip we would easily cut concrete.

The pain is starting to subside finally, but that could have something to do with the ibuprofen I took

[cstreit]

Wow. Did the end of the finger fill up like a water balloon?

Heal fast bud!

[biosurfer1]

no, but the skin peeled back around the cut and I can feel the cut is deep, although its more like a blood blister...very odd injury which at the moment it happened, I thought it was going to be a lot worse!

[sammyg2]

We use 25,000 psi blasters at work and occasionally have to bring in one rated at 40,000.
The operators look like knights in armor with all the protective ...well... armor they have to wear just in case.
Those things scare the hell out of me and I'm fearless

[biosurfer1]

wow, what the heck do you do to require 40,000psi blasters?Those would be fun to etch steel with!

[redstrosekNic]

I hit my foot with one from my summer job... It hurt.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by biosurfer1

wow, what the heck do you do to require 40,000psi blasters?Those would be fun to etch steel with!

Imagine huge radiators, each with a whole bunch of really long tubes.
We have hundreds of those radiators in the plant.

The inside of every tube need to be cleaned to bare metal every so many years for inspection and corrosion measurements so they run a high pressure "whip" through each tube to get em clean.
The 40k machines can usually do it in 1 or 2 passes. the 25k machines take more.

[Flieger]

What psi do water jet cutters use?

[Hydrocket]

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Flieger

What psi do water jet cutters use?

What kind of underwear does a 70 year old hooker wear?
Depends.

Waterjet
While using high-pressure water for erosion dates back as far as the mid-1800s with hydraulic mining, it was not until the 1930s that narrow jets of water started to appear as an industrial cutting device. In 1933, the Paper Patents Company in Wisconsin developed a paper metering, cutting, and reeling machine that used a diagonally moving waterjet nozzle to cut a horizontally moving sheet of continuous paper.[2] These early applications were at a low pressure and restricted to soft materials like paper.

Waterjet technology evolved in the post-war era as researchers around the world searched for new methods of efficient cutting systems. In 1956, Carl Johnson of Durox International in Luxembourg developed a method for cutting plastic shapes using a thin stream high-pressure waterjet, but those materials, like paper, were soft materials.[3] In 1958, Billie Schwacha of North American Aviation developed a system using ultra high pressure liquid cutting to cut hard materials.[4] This system used a 100,000 psi (690 MPa) pump to deliver a hypersonic liquid jet that could cut high strength alloys such as PH15-7-MO stainless steel. Used as a honeycomb laminate on the Mach 3 XB-70, this cutting method resulted in delaminating at high speed, requiring changes to the manufacturing process.[5]

While not effective for the XB-70 project, the concept was valid and further research continued to evolve waterjet cutting. In 1962, Philip Rice of Union Carbide explored using a pulsing waterjet at up to 50,000 psi (345 MPa) to cut metals, stone, and other materials.[6] Research by S.J. Leach and G.L. Walker in the mid-1960s expanded on traditional coal waterjet cutting to determine ideal nozzle shape for high-pressure waterjet cutting of stone,[7] and Norman Franz in the late 1960s focused on waterjet cutting of soft materials by dissolving long chain polymers in the water to improve the cohesiveness of the jet stream.[8] In the early 1970s, the desire to improve the durability of the waterjet nozzle led Ray Chadwick, Michael Kurko, and Joseph Corrivaeu of the Bendix Corporation to come up with the idea of using corundum crystal to form a waterjet orifice,[9] while Norman Franz expanded on this and created a waterjet nozzle with an orifice as small as 0.002 inches (0.05 mm) that operated at pressures up to 70,000 psi (483 MPa).[10] John Olsen, along with George Hurlburt and Louis Kapcsandy at Flow Research (later Flow Industries), further improved the commercial potential of the waterjet by showing that treating the water beforehand could increase the operational life of the nozzle.[11]

[edit] High pressureHigh-pressure vessels and pumps became affordable and reliable with the advent of steam power. By the mid-1800s, steam locomotives were common and the first efficient steam-driven fire engine was operational.[12] By the turn of the century, high-pressure reliability improved, with locomotive research leading to a sixfold increase in boiler pressure, some reaching 1600 psi (11 MPa). Most high-pressure pumps at this time, though, operated around 500–800 psi (3–6 MPa).

High-pressure systems were further shaped by the aviation, automotive, and oil industries. Aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing developed seals for hydraulically boosted control systems in the 1940s,[13] while automotive designers followed similar research for hydraulic suspension systems.[14] Higher pressures in hydraulic systems in the oil industry also led to the development of advanced seals and packing to prevent leaks.[15]

These advances in seal technology, plus the rise of plastics in the post-war years, led to the development of the first reliable high-pressure pump. The invention of Marlex by Robert Banks and John Paul Hogan of the Phillips Petroleum company required a catalyst to be injected into the polyethylene.[16] McCartney Manufacturing Company in Baxter Springs, Kansas, began manufacturing these high-pressure pumps in 1960 for the polyethylene industry. [17] Flow Industries in Kent, Washington set the groundwork for commercial viability of waterjets with John Olsen’s development of the high-pressure fluid intensifier in 1973,[18] a design that was further refined in 1976.[19] Flow Industries then combined the high-pressure pump research with their waterjet nozzle research and brought waterjet cutting into the manufacturing world.

[edit] Abrasive waterjet
The Evolution of the Abrasive Waterjet NozzleWhile cutting with water is possible, the addition of an abrasive turned the waterjet into a modern machining tool. This began in 1935 when the idea of adding an abrasive to the water stream was developed by Elmo Smith for the field of liquid ablative blasting.[20] Smith’s design was further refined by Leslie Tirrell of the Hydroblast Corporation in 1937, resulting in a nozzle design that created a cohesive mix of high-pressure water and abrasive.[21] Smith and Tirrell’s nozzle design set the groundwork for an efficient abrasive waterjet cutting tool. Producing a commercially viable abrasive waterjet nozzle came next, and an engineering research team at Flow Industries built on their high-pressure pump research, as well as Tirrell’s original nozzle design from the 1930s and Schwacha’s research in high-pressure waterjet cutting from the 1950s, to develop the modern abrasive waterjet nozzle.[22] The final step was creating a durable mixing tube that could withstand the power of the high-pressure abrasivejet, and it was Boride Products (now Kennametal) development of their ROCTEC line of ceramic tungsten carbide composite tubes that significantly increased the operational life of the abrasivejet nozzle.[23

Water jet cutter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[A930Rocket]

Good to hear it isn't too bad. Done it many a time and gotten away with it.

Not to take away from your story, but its funny you mention getting a picture for PPOT! I got my hand stuck between a drill nose piece (a very large $4M drill and the work surface when I was careless last month). It was my turn to hold the dumb end of the operation and had to teach the operator how to back the nose piece off my hand while pinned for several minutes. She was freaking out and I thought she might faint. No blood and guts or broken bones, but did it hurt and still hurts a month and a half later.

One hour later:



Next day or so:

[vash]

my friend a Pile Driver guy was running a hydraulic pile driver. the hoses get dragged around and they get cuts. we were standing right next to one when one ruptured. the pile-butt shielded his eyes and the stream almost cut his small finger off. i was dumbfounded!! he was squeezing yellow biodegradable hydraulic fluid out of the wound. it was gross. he refused to go to the doc..so i trumped him and called his boss. they rushed him out..the doc saved his hand. apparently, it could have been really bad.

heal up fast buddy!! do what the doc says.

[Buckterrier]

holy crap you guys!!Glad you're ok.

[Noah930]

A high pressure injection injury to the hand is usually a surgical emergency. (Obviously it will depend on the depth of the cut.) The problem is that foreign material (whether it's paint, non-sterile water, etc) and bacteria get shoved deep inside the hand and finger and travel significant distances subcutaneously. Due to fascial planes, the bacteria can propagate and lead to serious infections without significant visible changes at the skin level. In turn that can cause scarring of the tendons to surrounding tissue, which then can lead to permanent stiffness. A surgeon has to have a very good reason for NOT going to the OR immediately if called to the ER to see this type of patient.

[ZOA NOM]

Some folks were born solely to serve as an example to others... Welcome to the club :P