safety

104 Articles

The CPSC Says Plug To Socket, Not Plug To Plug, Please

September 17, 2022 by 102 Comments

When the power goes out, it goes without saying that all the lights and sockets in a house stop working. Savvy rural homeowners stock up with candles, batteries, LED lights, and inverters.  More foolhardy folks simply hook up their home electrical system to a generator using a mains lead with a plug on one end between the generator and a wall socket. This should be so obviously dangerous as to be unnecessary, but it’s become widespread enough that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a warning about the practice. In particular, they’re concerned that there’s not even a need to wire up a lead, as they’re readily available on Amazon.

The dangers they cite include electrocution, fire hazard from circumventing the house electrical protection measures, and even carbon monoxide poisoning because the leads are so short that the generator has to be next to the socket. Hackaday readers won’t need telling about these hazards, even if in a very few and very special cases we’ve seen people from our community doing it. Perhaps there’s a flaw in the way we wire our homes, and we should provide a means to decouple our low-power circuits when there’s a power cut.

It’s likely that over the coming decades the growth of in-home battery storage units following the likes of the Tesla Powerwall will make our homes more resilient to power cuts, and anyone tempted to use a plug-to-plug lead will instead not notice as their house switches to stored or solar power. Meanwhile, some of us have our own ways of dealing with power outages.

Plug image: Evan-Amos, Public domain.

Who Is Responsible For Your Safety?

September 10, 2022 by 182 Comments

We recently posted a video where some ingenious metal-shop hackers made a simple jig to create zig-zag oil grooves on the inside of a cylinder, and the comment section went wild. What ensued was a flood of complaints that the video displayed unsafe shop practices, from lack of safety glasses to wearing flip-flops while operating a lathe.

Where the comments went off the rails were people asking Hackaday to remove our discussion of the video, because the commenters thought that we were somehow implicitly encouraging open-toed footwear in the presence of machine tools. We certainly weren’t! We wanted you all to see the clever machining hack, and be inspired to build your own. We figure that you’ve got the safety angle covered.

Now don’t get me wrong – there were safety choices made in the video that I would not personally make. But it also wasn’t my shop and I wasn’t operating the machines. And you know who is ultimately responsible for the safety in my basement shop? Me! And guess who is responsible for safety in your shop.

But of course, none of us know everything about every possible hazard. (Heck, I wrote just that a few weeks ago!) So while we’re sympathetic with the “that’s not safe!” crew, we’re not going to censor inspiring hacks just because something done along the way wasn’t done in the way we would do it. Instead, it’s our job, in the comment section as in Real Life™, to help each other out and share our good safety tips when we can.

You’ll see some crazy stuff in videos, and none of it is to be repeated without thinking. And if you do see something dodgy, by all means point it out, and mention how you would do it better. Turn the negative example around for good, rather than calling for its removal. Use the opportunity to help, rather than hide.

But also remember that when the chips are flying toward your personal eyeballs, it’s up to you to have glasses on. We all do potentially hazardous things all the time, and it’s best to be thinking about the risks and their mitigation. So stay safe out there. Keep on learning and keep on hacking!

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Homemade SawStop Attachment Is Just About As Sketchy As It Sounds

August 2, 2022 by 56 Comments

TL;DR — when [Colin Furze] is your “safety inspector,” you really should be reconsidering your project goals.

Most of us have probably by now seen the SawStop brand of self-stopping table saw, which detects when something meatier than wood has the bad taste to touch the spinning blade, more or less instantly stopping it and preventing sudden traumatic amputations. It’s an outstanding idea, and we’d love to see the technology built into all table saws. But alas, SawStop saws are priced out of reach for many woodworkers, which left [Ruth Amos] to roll her own DIY version of the system.

It should be stated right off the bat that none of what [Ruth] does here is a good idea, and that everything shown is really just a proof of concept. The basis for her build was a somewhat flimsy-looking contractor-style saw, to which [Ruth] attached an Arduino set up to detect when something conductive touches the blade. She shares no particulars on the sensing method, but our guess is capacitive coupling. She then sets about experimenting with a series of above-table gizmos to arrest the blade, with limited success, plus all the attachments would make the saw essentially useless. But working above the table does make sense in the prototyping phase, and allowed her to figure out what wouldn’t work.

In the end, it was an electromagnetic clutch from an electric lawnmower that seemed to do the trick, albeit at the expense of heavy mods to the saw and a considerable increase in the system’s angular momentum. Nonetheless, the blade stops pretty close to instantly in the old hot dog test. It doesn’t drop the blade below the table, of course, and the hot dog is a little worse for the wear, but it’s still pretty impressive.

We’ve discussed SawStop’s technology before and why it isn’t perhaps as widely available as it should be, if you’re curious.

Continue reading “Homemade SawStop Attachment Is Just About As Sketchy As It Sounds” →

The Deadliest Project On The Internet?

May 2, 2022 by 96 Comments

Before deciding whether the headline of this article is clickbait, please take a moment to watch the excellent video by [BigClive] below the break. And then, go to your local search engine and search the phrase “fractal burning death”. We’ll wait.

With that out of the way, we have to admit that when we saw the subject “The most deadly project on the Internet” on [bigclivedotcom]’s YouTube channel, we were a bit skeptical. It’s a big claim. But then we watched the video and did some googling. Sadly, there are over 30 documented cases of this project killing people, and more cases of permanent grievous injury.

The results of Fractal Wood Burning with High Voltage

Fractal Burning is a hobby where wood is burned by slathering wood in a conductive slurry and then applying high voltage to either side of the wood, usually using something not rated for high voltage, such as jumper cables. The High Voltage is supplied by an unmodified Microwave Oven Transformer. Other projects using MOT’s typically rip out the high voltage secondary windings and re-wind them as low voltage, high amperage transformers, and are using in Spot Welders and even arc welders.

As laid out by [BigClive], the voltages coming from an unmodified MOT, ranging from 2-3 KV (That’s between two and three thousand Volts) at a very low impedance are right up there in the “Don’t go near it!” territory.

Continue reading “The Deadliest Project On The Internet?” →

Jet burner and close-up

$7 Tent Heater Provides Comfort On A Budget

January 6, 2022 by 120 Comments

At Hackaday’s Minnesota office, we appreciate central heat and hot coffee because the outdoor temperature is sub-zero in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Not everyone here has such amenities, and families living in tents could use heater help. If you live somewhere inhospitably cold and have the resources (time being the most crucial), please consider building and donating alcohol jet burners.

Alcohol burners like these are great for tents because if they tip over, they self-extinguish. You can fill them with 70% rubbing alcohol and they’ll heat a small space, and if running on denatured alcohol, they can be used to cook with. They won’t do you much good outdoors unless you have significant wind protection, as the tiny jet is likely to blow out. The first time you light one, you must heat the coil with a lighter or another heater to vaporize incoming fuel, then it can sustain itself by wicking fluid up from the reservoir jar. Relighting after a tip or accidental gust only takes a spark since the copper is already hot.

If you came for a hack, note how they fill the small tubes with salt funneled through a condiment cap before bending them. Sure, there are springy pipe bending tools, but who doesn’t already have salt and tape? Keeping humans warm is crucial, but heating metal takes a different approach.

Thank you for the tip, [cyberlass]

This Ham Radio Is Unsafe At Any Frequency

December 3, 2021 by 40 Comments

When we were kids we rode bicycles without pads and helmets. We drank sugary drinks. We played with chemistry sets and power tools. We also built things that directly used AC line current. [Mike] remembers and built one, presumably more to discuss the safety precautions around things that can shock you and not entice you to duplicate it. He calls it The Retro QRP Widowmaker, if that’s any kind of a hint. (Video of this unsafe transmitter also embedded below.)

The design showed up from time to time in old electronic magazines. Built on an open board and with no ground wire, the radio didn’t need a complex power supply. This wasn’t limited to transmitters, either. Some TVs and radios had a “hot chassis.” That’s why we were taught to touch an unknown chassis with the back of your hand first. A shock will contract your muscles and that will pull your arm away instead of making you grab the electrically active part.

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Bug Clive goes into detail about electrical safety even at the most basic level of wearing gloves.

The Unofficial Guide To (Avoiding) Electrocution

November 26, 2021 by 38 Comments

If you’re reading this sentence, there’s a pretty good chance that you interact with electricity more than just as an end-user. You’re a hacker. You aren’t afraid of a few volts, and your projects may involve both DC and AC voltage. Depending on what you’re working on, you might even be dealing with several thousand volts. And it’s you who Big Clive made the video below the break for.

“Familiarity breeds contempt” as the old saying goes, and the more familiar we are with electronics, the more cavalier we may tend to get. If we allow ourselves to get too lax, we may be found working on live circuits, skimping on safety for the sake of convenience, or jokingly saying “safety third!” far too often as we tear into a hazardous situation without scoping it out first.

Who better to bring us down to earth than Big Clive. In this video, he explains how electricity has the potential to impede the beating of our hearts, the action of our lungs, and even break bones. You’ll find a candid discussion about what electric shock does to a person, how to avoid it, and how to help if someone near you suffers electric shock.

Of course, if safety isn’t your thing, then maybe you’re ready to Shake Hands With Danger.

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