Learn About Soldering Safety for Circuit Bending

Video Transcript

AMANDA CLAIRE: Okay, so the other really, really, really important thing to think about in terms of safety especially for kids or anyone who really hasn't had much experience with soldering iron is safety regarding the soldering iron. A soldering iron gets really, really, really hot and may sound like an obvious statement but I mean, it gets hot enough to melt metal that has a low melting point but that's really hot enough to burn you instantly, like third-degree burn instantly. So that's really something that you need to think about because when you're circuit bending, a lot of times you're just really focused on what you're doing, and you might not be focused too much where your other hand is or you're doing something and then you pick it up and the you brush your cheek with it, now you've got a third-degree burn on your cheek right? Or maybe your friend is there watching and you're soldering and then you pick it up and now you burn they're face right? So this thing gets so hot that you can--I mean, you can cause a really serious burn before you even know it, and so this is why children should really be supervised if they're going to be using a soldering iron and if you're an adult and you haven't had much experience with a soldering iron, you really to think about it because you can get burned very easily. There's a couple of different kind of soldering irons like one like this actually doesn't--it's kind of a standalone soldering iron. So something like this, you want to have a little stand that it sits on and that's not a great setup but at least you're keeping the soldering iron contained; you are kind of reducing the risk of fire, I mean, which of course is the other hazard of soldering iron is you can set your house on fire and burn it to the ground if you don't know how to kind of control where it is at all times. A better soldering iron design that some people like is something like this where the--where you can see that it's kind of a single unit where there is a nice robust stand here, here's the iron, the switch and temperature controller right on it, has a nice a coil kind of system to hold that iron. And this is a little bit safer in terms of keeping that hot iron kind of contained so it's kind of away from your skin and away from other things that are combustible. So those are really the two risks of soldering is burning yourself and then burning your table or your house down in a worst case scenario. So just think about that.

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