Things that terrify you on the bench.

[paulca]

No. 147:  The copper solder iron cleaning ball.

Why is it terrifying?  Well I have no holder for it. It floats around the desk, generally getting stuck to things and getting trailed around.  It's all very well until there is power on the bench too. 

Power + Copper wool ball = FIRE!

I have seen what you can do with a metal wool cleaning pad (Brillo pad in the UK) and a 9V battery, I really don't want to see what happens with a copper wool ball and a 30V breadboard circuit.

[fourtytwo42]

Put a leash on it (short peice of string) tied to something immovable to limit it's radius of action

I hate bangs, flashes and smoke in that order !!

[paulca]

I have a kennel for it on order.   It's leaving little solder dust poops everywhere too   I have to keep remembering to walk it so it can shake that stuff out on the floor where the hoover can get it.

[joeqsmith]

It's not what's on the bench that terrifies me, it's what is between the bench and the chair.  That's some terrifying stuff. 

[Cliff Matthews]

I hate spark shows. Why? My plywood-top bench is almost 16-ft long with ESD control via steel edge-strip grounded by a 1-meg resistor. When testing old amps (eg live chassis tube stuff), I need to look all the way down the bench for any metal equipment bypassing/grounding the strip. I plan to eliminate this by GFCI (RCD) and hard-wiring my fused 600w isolation transformer to separate power-bars at either end.

[paulca]

Putting my more serious face on....  I have kept it on the desk for the minimum after a quick safety check for "loose power".  It lives in the toolbox 99.9% of the time.

But I had it out today to fix a wiring mistake on a perfboard while I had two -+15V breadboards running and 12V PSU bannanas lying on the desk.

That inspired the post.  I think I deserve credit for realising and pointing out my little copper puppy is a death trap

[SeanB]

Quick cure for the ball of copper is to use a small tin can, either a tuna can, a tomato paste can ( bloody mary size) or even a small martini mixer can of soda with the lid removed. I just use a small 30g metal box with lid, because I have a box of them around, and stuck it to the soldering iron stand with some VHB tape. Copper ( actually brass0 scouring pad was the most expensive part, $1 at the supermarket for one big enough to cut into pieces to fill 4 cans.

[paulca]

By the way.. I said No. 147.  For me, No. 1 is ... a shorted high capacity, high discharge LiPo.

Than again I have yet to deal with mains.  Though I might be a bit more concerned about the LiPo... Number 2 would be a similar Lead acid.

[tautech]

Misplaced TH lead snippits !
DMM leads when adjusting CRO 3KV EHT voltages. 
Charged primary SMPS caps.

Not much else. 

Edit
Except radar........I was asked to fix one once, that thing did scare the shite out of me.

[M4trix]

The most thing that terrifies me on the bench is... dust ! Damn OCD... 

[Hextejas]

 

Me, I am the scariest thing. You should see what I do when I see smoke, which has happened 3 times in my short 4 month career.
I blow on it like its a birthday cake. No kidding. And then I reach in and start pulling wires.
Luckily, actually,  its by design, I never work with more than about 12v DC, which is usually what starts smoking as I get him shorted out.

[Cliff Matthews]

Me, I am the scariest thing. You should see what I do when I see smoke, which has happened 3 times in my short 4 month career.
I blow on it like its a birthday cake. No kidding. And then I reach in and start pulling wires.
Luckily, actually,  its by design, I never work with more than about 12v DC, which is usually what starts smoking as I get him shorted out.

Reminds me of something indelibly etched in youth. At 8-yrs I soldered something above my bed and a big blob of solder dropped on the sheets which started to smoulder. Yeah, blowing only ignites it..    It was a glass of juice close-by that stopped the hole from increasing past 4 inches in diameter. For sure my old man tanned my hide, but after half a century I can only recall few things are harder to put out than that.

[Adrian_Arg.]

It's not what's on the bench that terrifies me, it's what is between the bench and the chair.  That's some terrifying stuff.

if that terrifies me too, when my ds1054z sees me, it starts to sweat electrons 

[igendel]

Misplaced TH lead snippits !

I was just about to write that!

[GreyWoolfe]

Except radar........I was asked to fix one once, that thing did scare the shite out of me.

One of my teachers t ITT was a radar tech.  He worked on shipboard radar while live.  He also worked on the big phased array ground radar and said while testing, he watched a deer explode as it passed in front of the array.

[apelly]

Jewellery. Metal watch straps, bracelets, rings...

[BravoV]

My bottle of acetone, as I used it often and alot to clean stuff. So worry that one day I accidentally knock the bottle off by accident while its not properly closed yet, and pour it into hot solder ignites it ... and/or .. splashed and spilled all over the place on the bench table that has lots of "plastic" materials starting from oscilloscope, DMM, probes down to components. 

[EEVblog]

Simple 240V, I'm scared to death of it, seriously. I would never have made a sparky.

[vk6zgo]

Red back spiders?

[tautech]

Except radar........I was asked to fix one once, that thing did scare the shite out of me.

One of my teachers t ITT was a radar tech.  He worked on shipboard radar while live.  He also worked on the big phased array ground radar and said while testing, he watched a deer explode as it passed in front of the array.

That is scary !
I thought just the neon on a broom handle to check the small marine unit I fiddled with was going was bad enough but pre-cooked venison ? ? ? 

[stmdude]

For me, No. 1 is ... a shorted high capacity, high discharge LiPo.

I've done that, and it turned out to be pretty harmless (ignoring the hole in the wallet). The thin copper strips that goes out of each cell "simply" ceases to exist, and the short stops. It's quite a blinding flash, but it seems the strips acts as fuses when a couple of thousand amps go through them.

Now, anything but a dead short scares me. And AC.. 

[bd139]

Solvents scare me. I know someone who was sitting at their bench with an open can of cleaning fluid (I suspect this was IPA or something similar) and some of the vapor collected on the bench and went woosh due to an unknown ignition source. Everything on his bench was on fire, including him. But it was burning without a flame. You don't necessarily notice it immediately so you can't do much about it other than get the fuck out quickly. Most of his equipment was melted within seconds and he had partial thickness burns to his hands and face that took about a year to heal properly. His neck is scarred from this still and he can't fully extend his left hand due to the scarring on that.

Also after a little visit to Moorfields eye hospital, I wear some decent protective glasses while soldering. A tiny little blob of solder pinged off the sponge and went in my eye, fortunately towards the edge. If it had hit the middle, it would have wrecked my sight. You only get once chance there.

[Mr. Scram]

Solvents scare me. I know someone who was sitting at their bench with an open can of cleaning fluid (I suspect this was IPA or something similar) and some of the vapor collected on the bench and went woosh due to an unknown ignition source. Everything on his bench was on fire, including him. But it was burning without a flame. You don't necessarily notice it immediately so you can't do much about it other than get the fuck out quickly. Most of his equipment was melted within seconds and he had partial thickness burns to his hands and face that took about a year to heal properly. His neck is scarred from this still and he can't fully extend his left hand due to the scarring on that.

Also after a little visit to Moorfields eye hospital, I wear some decent protective glasses while soldering. A tiny little blob of solder pinged off the sponge and went in my eye, fortunately towards the edge. If it had hit the middle, it would have wrecked my sight. You only get once chance there.

Solvents also scare me when it comes to the more sneaky long term effects. Some of the household stuff is surpringly nasty.

[Rbastler]

Hydrochloric acid. I cleaned of some cat piss and shit with it, after my cat shat and pissed one my bench and into my "Allstrom" (able to be powered by a dc and ac grid) tube amp. The acid corroded everything nearby....

Guess my cat didn't like it, when I wasn't home for some days.....

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

[paulca]

Thanks for the reminder about iso propanol burning with an invisible flame... and it being extremely flammable.

The stuff I bought has a safety encouragement anyway as the bottles as so unstable it's not wise to set them down while open anyway.

Unfortunately it also leaves a sticky residue.  This might just be the flux it dissolved spreading out or it might be cheap fake and not 99% pure as sold.