The Nostalgia Thread - Tales of Middleschool DIY & Soldering Iron Burns

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by Vivekphadnis

I was very curious to know what would happen to an LED if I applied 230V mains to it. So I thought I would try it. I took a green LED and put it into the mains socket at home. Then I ducked and switched on. I found that most of the green part had flown off.

When i tried that once , The LED stayed put, and i flew off . I was holding it at that time!

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by greenhorn

Towards the end , there was stuff all over the floor, and my Soldering iron, translucent white handle , came with a green LED inside , which i modded to blue, was lying on the floor. Must have been quite sleepy when i sat on it. My *** got burnt , and the pressure must have shorted out the LED /wiring in the handle, which went out with a bang and took the house's fuse with it

Quite painful that was....

Man this may be painful, but reading it I am in splits.
We all have burnt hands some time or other, but its the first time I have heard someone burning their behind with a soldering iron

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Man this may be painful, but reading it I am in splits.
We all have burnt hands some time or other, but its the first time I have heard someone burning their behind with a soldering iron

thankfully, didn't have to bear it for much. the bang made me jump up almost immediately

[ram_hyundai]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

My first experience with things electrical was in class 8th when I put in the cordless phone battery in the mains and switched it on.
The battery exploded, the generator(there was a power cut) got overloaded and I could hear the rpm dropping momentarily and then the fuse did its job.
I never told anybody it was me. They just thought it was the fuse acting up.

After that I started doing electro chemistry, trying electrolysis with every metal I could find, and also trying to burn hydrogen, followed by a short period exploring how inflammable spirit is(my parents are docs, so there was no shortage of spirit et al.)
Thankfully before I could blow up the house(I had by now graduated to investigating how cool it is when you spray butane based compressed rexona deodorant on a naked flame), my interest shifted to electronics, and repairing old transistor radio's and making antennas just to catch PTVs english shows which were aired in the evening.
That time cable TV had just come, and all parents thought of it as an evil device to wean kids away from studies.
People in Jalandhar could get PTV easily, but in Ludhiana, you have to play around with the Antenna on sunny days, and cloudy days always ensured good reception.

then our neighbors got cable, and I tried kundi, and the cable operator complained to my parents.
So as a workaround I did a small cut, attached a copper wire strand to a tree branch, and connected my antenna to the tree(indirect biological kundi) and used to watch cable at night when everyone was sleeping.

Finally at college my passtime(much to the annoyance of my lab partners whose aim was to score 85% in every exam and keep studying whole his life) was to see how much current a power transistor could endure before blowing up.
But soon interests in all this waned, and now I do occasional soldering(I am very bad at it), and disassemble and reassemble PCs
I have even killed a motherboard with a screwdriver, overheated and damaged a couple of CPUs, and destroyed a hard drive by magnetic accidents.

Do not bring you electronic troubles to me(PC assembly etc.,) unless you want an explosion.

some thing similar happend with me too.we used to get medicine bottles -homoeo ones ,very small which we used to do electrolisis.i remember me and my brother playing with a a/c d/c converter.one end wrapped arround a carbon rod from a battery and the other used to make sparks when rubbed on the carbon rod.n -number of dancing led lights ,couple of amplifiers etc was also a part of my DIY.
ram

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by ram_hyundai

some thing similar happend with me too.we used to get medicine bottles -homoeo ones ,very small which we used to do electrolisis.i remember me and my brother playing with a a/c d/c converter.one end wrapped arround a carbon rod from a battery and the other used to make sparks when rubbed on the carbon rod.n -number of dancing led lights ,couple of amplifiers etc was also a part of my DIY.
ram

electrolysis with carbon rods is no fun, You should have tried out chrome , brass, and all the metals you could get your hands on. so many funny colours .

once did it for a whole day to make a home made hydrogen baloon. boy those were non existent back then..

[maddy42]

I clearly remember once in the hostel i wanted to find out if power can pass through a divider without tripping the line. Basically we were in Prep time and i was really bored so just took a divider and inserted it into the plug point in front of my desk. Switched on the point and it goes like Phatt!! I was shocked but luckily there was no trip which occured.

I remember one classmate who had a geometric box which had a bulb which switched on when the box was opened. That was really cool at that time(7th standard)

[dinar]

I remember my first solder iron, I was in the 5th std and my cousin gave me a radio kit and a folding solder iron, the kit came out good, I could not tune the dam thing cause I had no knowledge about tuning it than.... after that there were a lot of hilarious instants , like I tried to solder wires directly to a battery and it blew up, solder iron was left on the table turned ON and had gone out with friends a the wood table had big black spots on it.....and many more ....but I got hooked on to DIY ...not just electronics but lot of stuff.

[DerAlte]

Didn't have any incidents with soldering irons, but ...

1975. The auditorium of Delhi College of Engg. (Kashmiri Gate at that time). Me and a bunch of classmates were rewiring the PA / Audio system of the auditorium, whose main wiring was only 50 years old at that time.

So, we had all the wires laid out and we were busy doing the various connections. I was up on a ladder, trying to connect a speaker box (DIY) up on the mantel. Wire strippers? Incisors - we were bionic people! So here I am taking the end of a wire and stripping the insulation and KABOOM! Next thing I realize I have fallen on the guys below and another guy is screaming AIIIEEEEE and going berzerk.

Turns out that the wire I went to strip thinking it was the speaker wire (in those days ALL wiring was 2-color twisted multi-core flex, the common household variety), had been mistakenly connected to the power socket box by someone who had thought it was the wire to his electric drill. Fortunately the stripping motion was down and outward, so the wire touched my teeth for a fraction of a second only. But, after I got the shock, the wire was thrown out of my hand and it fell on a poor unsuspecting fella who bore the brunt!

[babe_on_wheels]

OH...just reminds me of my days in school playing with vinegar et al to make a vulcano outta it for a science exhibition!!!!
I remember being gifted a mini electronics kit with wires and resistors and a spring kinda thingie breadboard!!!
Built an oscillator!!!
And offcourse there was also a DC motor kit in it!
Which I got bored of and left it in a corner of my house and then utilised it during my 11th standard Science Exhibition to create a HYDRO ELECTRIC POWER STATION!!
LOL...a SCALE MODEL kinda thing!!!
Still remember the time I used small plastic spoons and parachute coconut bottles to make a Turbine!!
Creativity at its best I Guess with uffcourse Budget in The head!!!
That fetched me a good GOLD MEDAL still have it and Remembering the good old days and I AM NOSTALGIC NOW!!!
Cheers!!!

[matrix_ren]

Oh well besides the usual tearing apart transistors/stereos and even my old BUSH TV... one of the memorable project i was involved was for this science competition in the 9th grade in school.

We made a Bascule bridge(the opening type bridges) we used the usual 3V/6V motors and used an alternating adapter and the bridge was held together with strings. and it opened and closed by itself( had even imagined using sensors but really didnt know how to make one back then.i remember even making a scaled replica of the TITANIC to impress this girl i liked in school(titanic fever was on back then). And yes we won!! although back then i didnt have a camera of my own and never got a chance to take pics of the same. what followed was even worse. some of the WWF crazy freaks took apart our whole creation.I felt so bad about it that years later when i got a chance to help out my cousin with her project i made the same thing with much better looks ( due to a good practice with model-making now frm my architecture course ) AND I simply like to adore it now and then minus the Titanic now...coz the one i was impressing is now my sweetheart ...

[matrix_ren]

I know my above topic might not be all soldering and wiring enough But there is one more stupid one i wish to tell :P

This is rather recent one during my 2nd yr in architecture. As the trend is I was helping out my senior with his thesis work and with the model. we were living in this apartment of his and i was also the hospitality and beverages manager...

since it was an empty apartment of his..there was no gas connection or anything so one of the guys had brought along his electric stove from his hostel. and this stone age piece was almost in its last stages and in pieces. this rather annoyed me and i thought of maybe fixing it.I had only recently found the potential abilities of the Fevibond glue in model making and thought of utilizing the same since it was so abundant at his place. but what i was dumb enough to forget was that fevibond in "highly inflammable"!!!.

So well there i was happily sticking away and thinking of what a smart surprise i would give them...
oh yea!! it was a big flamy surprise alright...the stove exploded as soon as i pressed the switch and there we were looking at the last thing we looked forward to at the end of the day. We all went hungry that night but that incident was certainly memorable to my senior friend and he even penned it in his thesis. hehe

[rmonie]

I had this habit of smelling a soldering iron to figure out if it was hot. Have misjudged the distance many a time and ended up with a cauterised nose end!!

Also check this out: The theory of Electrics & Electronics!!

Many years ago, a good friend of mine and one of the smartest engineers I know, let me in on a secret. After years of proving the theory correct, I have decided to relate the secret of all electrical appliances, motors, machines and other mechanical devices to the general public.

The secret ingredient of all mechanical and electrical items is SMOKE.

I am sure some so-called scholars would disagree, but I ask you to relate some of your own experiences to mine.

I first noticed this phenomenon many years ago while working on our newly purchased land. I had wired an electrical receptacle to a temporary power pole, so that I could have electricity for working. I bought an electric weed eater for $89.00 to use cleaning up the property. (This amount back then was half a week's pay.) I plugged it in, and after about one minute of a real fast whirl, POOF. A cloud of smoke engulfed me, and my new weed eater froze up. I immediately returned the defective part to Sears and got a new one. To my surprise, this one too, engulfed me in the magical mixture of white cloud. I then realized I had wired my receptacle as 220 volt, instead of 110 volt.

I related the story to my engineer friend who then told me the obvious. The weed eaters stopped working, because I let the smoke out.

Since then, I have noticed that when the smoke gets out of a fan, a heater, a lamp, a transformer, a computer, a VCR, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, a clothes dryer, or a car (regardless of the model), that item will not work anymore.

I was reminded of the secret theory on Sunday this week when my lovely wife and I were taking our Chevy Blazer out for a test drive. I had worked on it all Friday Night and Saturday making repairs on it. On Sunday afternoon, while going to Walmart, the Blazer did what I have seen way too many of my cars do in the past. A huge ball of white-grey smoke barreled out the back. Then the engine stopped. It would not start again. I let the smoke out.

Everything runs on SMOKE.