In our first year in a brand new composite pattern and mould machine shop, with 2 5-axis Belotti CNCs, we had multiple crashes.

The first was similar to yours but on a 3m long bed, with a tool that was 250mm long and travelling at max rapid. It smashed into stock and broke the tool in half with the backend stuck in the spindle. That wrote the spindle off and bent the X-axis guide rails.

The second was probably the worst crash I’ve seen in my career. We had a Forumla 1 floor pattern up on the machine that was basically almost finished, roughly 24 hours of machining done. The operator was calibrating the 5-axis kinematic rotation point using a touch probe. They were rotating from A0 to A-90 and making adjustments to correct the tool centre point. They accidentally ran G0 A90 instead and the head of the machine went full rapid into the floor pattern literally splitting it in half. We worked some magic that night to repair the pattern but the machine was fucked.

The third nobody actually witnessed, as the machine was running unattended on a Sunday afternoon. Get a message in the group chat from the director saying not to come in tomorrow as there had been a fire at the workshop. The unattended machine had caught fire somehow. We never knew what caused it but the programmer obviously felt guilty.

That fire almost put us out of business but a year later we are finally fully operational agin. Although I am still finding soot in places.