Near misses ? .. plenty! Though I forget most of them lol.

Probably my most scary personal encounter was when testing Rottweiler 2's weapon for the first time. It was a 12 abrasive angle grinder disc powered by a flymo engine. Back then I didnt have the tools or skills to make the necessary modifications myself so I gave the complete flymo strimmer to a local lawnmower repair place and asked them to shorten the pole and attach the disc close to the engine.

So I got it back when they'd finished and it looked the part so I bolted it to the frame of the robot and started up the engine. Revved it up to top speed and in a blink of an eye the disk came detached from the rotor, bounced off the robot frame and missed me by a few cm.

Upon closer inspection it turns out that their method of attaching the disc was simply to sandwich it between a washer and the original strimmer head. Clearly this wasnt up to the task of securing a big cutting disc as well; I'm guessing they didnt test it themselves before handing it over to me.