That's a good story. Yeah I feel like there must be soo many more opportunities to physically damage/harm something from robotics than software alone.
Back in 2002, I was getting a package with a brand new Pocket PC (smartphone without the phone, running Windows). And I really wanted to know when it was delivered, but the UPS guy would regularly leave packages on the porch without ringing the bell or anything.
This was before you could get delivery alerts or anything like that. But I had a spare laptop with an integrated webcam (wow!), and I'd figured out how to make it run actions on motion detection.
My plan was to point the laptop at the door, and eject the CD drive when it detected motion. The tray of the drive would push a water bottle off the table. That would land on a seesaw, which would launch a deck of cards in a hard plastic case at the door and make a very loud noise.
It's unclear why I couldn't just play a really sound on the speakers instead. Anyway, I tested the program by standing in front of the laptop and waving my hand.
It worked perfectly! The CD tray ejected, and I watched as the water bottle slowly rolled off the table. It dropped onto the seesaw...... and instantly launched a hard plastic deck at my face and got me right between the eyes.
Never again have I been in so much pain and also so excited about my code working perfectly at the exact same time.
Also I like that even after you came up with "knock something off the table" you felt you needed a seesaw catapult thing and didn't just knock something off that could make the actual sound like a cake tin or bell or something.
It totally doesn't make any sense! I think I might have been fascinated with the idea of Rube Goldberg machines or something at the time. Or maybe I thought I could build a "security system" with it? Also it was summer and I was a bored teenager.
One key observation, though, when working with code is that the machine becomes so close to predictable that it's more dangerous than if it were unpredictable. A cordless handheld drill is hardly a tool that most people would call 'hazardous'. You turn the trigger, the thing rotates, grab the chuck and you can likely stall it. But that much energy in something driven by code is extremely dangerous, it's waiting for any of who knows how many conditions to take off, a common one is that putting your hands in/on something that seems to be not moving can 'make' a sensor and the machine will take off.
There are definitely two kinds of safety domains, one applies to manually operated tools where the operator of, say, a knife is responsible for their own safety - if they cut themselves, they're at fault, not the knifemaker. There's another kind of safety engineering where if the machine takes off 'by itself' while an operator is in the way it's the machine designer's fault for not stopping that from happening, the operator can't be expected to know what's going on.
The latter should become more common as computers continue to permeate everything we use - that cordless drill is no longer controlled by the operator with a trigger switch that connects power to a DC motor, it's a brushless motor driver with an analog input sensing the position of the trigger and the EMF of the motor, and the charge state of the batteries, and who knows what else. Bump a sensor and it might take off, you don't know why it does what it does.
I'll continue to make my automated cells as safe as I can, but don't trust code that's not so simple you can be confident of how it works.
A friend needed a valve cover gasket changed on his Honda, and his wife needed to use the car for her Uber runs that night. He came over and instead of our usual hand tools I put a socket adapter on my 20V drill to speed up disassembly. I handed the drill to him and told him "start on the lowest torque setting, and move up in small steps."
I turned around to grab more tools from the toolbox. A minute later, I heard a loud noise. I turned to see the car's windshield cracked and a shocked look on my friend's face.
My friend was used to his renter's power drill. He hadn't anticipated how much torque a modern contractor's drill outputs and set the torque to the maximum setting. On the third valve cover bolt, the drill had caught on the bolt head and spun my friend around, smashing the battery into the windshield.
There's a piece of paper taped to me toolbox called "List of things <friend's name> may not attempt unsupervised." It gained a couple of entries that day...
Relevant old article: http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html
But that same drill might be asked to bore a large hole in a piece of wood, and the user would anticipate the amount of leverage they need to control it. Two hands, arms close to body, etc.
That is often the difference between home and tradesman tools. A tradesman can reasonably be expected to handle a bit more responsibility from their tools than the home handyman.
For a continuous drilling operation the torque is totally fine, the problem is abrupt changes in torque because of something catching. On drills without this feature that's what the torque limiting clutch is for.
We actually had an older drill with the mechanical clutch with a stripped high gear that we kept around for driving screws instead of tossing because the new one was so bad.
A lower power (e.g. 300Nm max) battery driver is great for when you have to undo lots of lower sized bolts, while it would be a little bit underpowered for wheel nuts or motorcycle fork retaining bolts.
They're supposed to tentioned correctly with a torque wrench, usually between about 110 and 120Nm.
Edit to add a reference, just random from a search: https://www.barum-tyres.com/car/expert-advice/safety-driving...
And for that purpose, it does seem appropriate.
However my point still stands, somewhat: if 300Nm is insufficient to undo your wheelnuts, they're way too tight.
Ducati single-sided swingarm nuts can be similar, but I have not yet owned a Ducati.
You should image-search the term "radial drill" sometime. ;)
$21: https://www.amazon.com/Irwin-Tools-Drill-Press-226340/dp/B00...
$25: https://www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-jaw-capacity-drill-pres...
You don't need a high-dollar Kurt milling vise for a drill press, and you only need to constrain the part in one degree of freedom (rotation about Z axis). Just put a single fastener in your table and drop the slots in that vise over it. Gravity and quill pressure hold it in Z, the table holds it flat against rotation about X and Y, and you want it to have the ability to slide a bit in X and Y to let the drill find the center of your punch/pilot hole. If the drill catches, the torque will push against the stud and it can't move.