<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div><span>I'm late to this party but:</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>- Using my foot to hold a piece of wood at an angle to the floor, then drilling through the wood INTO MY FOOT ... fortunately, I only went through the fleshy part between my first and second toe, no bone, cartilage, or important muscle... ouch...</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span></span><span><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0,
0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>- Unscrewing a threaded cap from an assembly that I knew contained a spring, but underestimating the strength of the spring: SPROING! The cap dented the wall where it hit, and the screwdriver fortunately went with it (away from me). I had a nice cut on my hand ... and a cool long spring...</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>these are both arguments that "survival of the fittest" no longer applies.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color:
transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>E</span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> "sincrest256@gmail.com" <sincrest256@gmail.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Lab <lab@artengine.ca> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thursday, June 27, 2013 1:42:56 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Lab] Open Question: Dumbest Thing You've Done While Making<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><div id="yiv1080119771"><div><div id="yiv1080119771BB10_response_div" style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">Picking up a recently
unplugged soldering iron like it is a screwdriver to move it across the workbench burning a nice line across my hand.</div><div style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">Putting a 16 volt ceramic capacitor into a 30 volt circuit shooting a stream of sparks 5 feet long was also exciting.</div><div style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">-Tony</div><div style="width:100%;font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div>
<div id="yiv1080119771_signaturePlaceholder" style="font-family:Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125);background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the TELUS network.</div> <table style="background-color:white;border-spacing:0px;" width="100%"> <tbody><tr><td id="yiv1080119771_persistentHeaderContainer" colspan="2" style="background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <div id="yiv1080119771_persistentHeader" style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(181, 196, 223);border-top-width:1pt;padding:3pt 0in 0in;font-family:Tahoma, 'BB Alpha Sans', 'Slate Pro';font-size:10pt;">
<div><b>From: </b>Richard Guy Briggs</div><div><b>Sent: </b>Monday, June 24, 2013 4:41 PM</div><div><b>To: </b>Jason Cobill</div><div><b>Cc: </b>lab</div><div><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lab] Open Question: Dumbest Thing You've Done While Making</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div id="yiv1080119771_persistentHeaderEnd" style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(186, 188, 209);border-top-width:1pt;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><br><div id="yiv1080119771_originalContent" style="">On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 04:00:51PM -0400, Jason Cobill wrote:<br>> Experiments gone wrong? Tools gone out of control? What's the dumbest<br>> thing you should have caught before you nearly set your house on fire? What<br>> did you learn from it?<br>> <br>> Me first: I plugged in a table saw without checking the switch first -<br>> it was on. And it was covered in 2x4s and sheetwood scraps, which it<br>> proceeded to launch
across the garage and nearly take out a window.<br>> It _should_ have been off, but I _should_ have checked. So now I check.<br>> Every. Time.<br><br>Oh, this one's easy. ;-) I have two related to electricity.<br><br><br>1) When I was about 10 I had a power transformer that I had taken out of a<br>wood-cabinet vacuum tube TV set. I had learned to solder when I was about 8.<br>I knew which side was the primary and I wanted to test the secondaries. I knew<br>they would be high. I had a cheap analog multimeter from Radio Scrap with a<br>750V rating. I carefully attached and shielded the primary wires to a<br>standard two-prong plug. I was sitting on my bed (so no danger of<br>grounding out, plus it was an isolated secondary). I pinched one<br>secondary wire with the meter test lead, then grabbed the second test<br>lead and went to pinch it with the other secondary... (It was about 350V.)<br> I haven't done that ever again! Now I used
insulated leads.<br><br><br>2) In my last year of Electrical/Computer Engingeering at U of Ottawa,<br>I was working on the U of Ottawa solar rayce car RALOS-II, wiring up the<br>main power backplane of the car (I was the Electrical Systems<br>Co-ordinator) working on some low-voltage wires on one card that<br>happenned to be facing a high-voltage, high-current card connected to 7<br>car batteries in series (90VDC, 1000A?). As I pulled my hands away from<br>my work something sparked. Naturally I pulled back, jamming my family<br>gold ring into the high-voltage card. Once the sparks stopped, two of<br>my fingers were black. After a quick throw of the main power switch for<br>the car to avoid any further incident, one of my teammates packed me off<br>to the hospital to clean things up. On the way to the hospital, I was<br>babbling with all the wire cross-sectional diameters, materials and<br>resistances per metre still fresh in my mind, calculating
that must have<br>been a 100kW arc welding burn. <br> I was lucky. I still have all my fingers, but one has an<br>interesting ring-shaped scar (that was 20 years ago this month) and the<br>bloodstone with the family crest in the ring cracked. I thought of<br>getting it repaired, then decided to leave it as a reminder. I was very<br>lucky it didn't instead hit the iron ring on the adjacent finger that I<br>had earned not 2 months prior. Gold is a much better conductor, so it<br>didn't heat up much compared with the other parts involved. The two<br>one-inch spade terminals on the card along with 1/2" PC board traces<br>vanished. I had to check a second identical card to find out what was<br>there. I earned the nicname "Zot" for that one...<br> I now remove my rings when working with high voltage/current.<br><br><br>I still love electricity! :D<br><br><br>> -Jason Cobill<br><br> slainte mhath, RGB<br><br>--<br>Richard Guy Briggs
-- ~\ -- ~\ <hpv.tricolour.net><br><www.TriColour.net> -- \___ o \@ @ Ride yer bike!<br>Ottawa, ON, CANADA -- Lo_>__M__\\/\%__\\/\%<br>Vote! -- <greenparty.ca>_____GTVS6#790__(*)__(*)________(*)(*)_________________<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lab mailing list<br>1. subscribe http://artengine.ca/mailman/listinfo/lab<br>2. then email Lab@artengine.ca<br></div></div>
</div><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lab mailing list<br>1. subscribe <a href="http://artengine.ca/mailman/listinfo/lab" target="_blank">http://artengine.ca/mailman/listinfo/lab</a><br>2. then email <a ymailto="mailto:Lab@artengine.ca" href="mailto:Lab@artengine.ca">Lab@artengine.ca</a><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>