The most deadly project on the Internet

let's talk about the project on the internet that is killing the most people uh in the region of 30 dead in the usa alone and those are only ones they've actually worked out what happened the ones that they've actually reported it's wood fracking also called lichtenberg or fractal burning and i can show you the results of fractal burning it looks like this it looks very stylish it's where you burn patterns into wood by applying a salty solution to the surface and then you pass electrical current through it by using high voltage to drive that burning across i made a video about it the video was mainly saying here's what you shouldn't do it was all about safety and while people are still dying so here's another video and it is largely about safety so there are tutorials on the internet that show you how to remove a transformer from a microwave this is a microwave transformer and connect a plug and flex the primary and car jump leads to the secondary now noting that this does operate at 2 000 volts 2000 volts rms under load uh offload it will be higher and the peak voltage will go in the region of 3 000 to 4 000 volts so car jump leads rated for 12 or 24 volts are not really a good idea also playing about with this while the power's on is definitely not a good idea but those projects then show how to burn the wood with the high voltage by spraying it with a mixture of baking soda and water and you they're they're just up washed their hands are wet with it their tables wet with it and then they show you probing it in some videos with short sticks with the electrodes in the end just probing about in the wood and it's like i don't think they realize just how dangerous this is because uh complacency will inevitably step in and mistakes will be made this unit is almost silent when powered there's no warning when it's on so the possibility of one day slipping up uh having an electric shock from insulation breaking down or just the buildup of salty water that thing i was talking about sticks one example is a guy who was showing his family and then he said oh i get a tingling sensation just before his arms went up to his chest and he was in the process of being electrocuted when somebody rise what was happening and turned the power off it's a bit grim the fatality rate if they get too complacent it's not like working with the mains where you make electric shot and go ow and well i'm not going to do that again in the case of this transformer it is the same voltage as the electric chair it's the same voltage as the lower level overhead primary distribution cables um so the chances are you just won't do it again full stop so let me describe uh some of the dangers of this let me bring a notepad in i could read you a story do you want a story you do want a story i'll provide a link to this as well because it shows the things that happen so i'll link to the website because there's a graphic picture with it it's a horrible picture i'm not going to put it here because it really is horrible it shows a mutilated hand and well the karens would report the video if i put that up also i don't want to be a scary video like that but the story goes inspired by social media image sharing sites and online tutorials kahun decided she wanted to try a trend made popular through the internet wood fracking also known as lichtenberg wood burning or fractal wood burning this woodworking method includes using high voltage electricity to essentially shock lichtenberg patterns into wood which some say against expert advice can be achieved with a microwave transformer or car battery i'm not sure it works the car battery she is quoted saying they show you pretty pictures and links that take you to tutorials until you figure out how to make your own cohoon said so that's what i ended up doing i followed links until i found a guy somewhere on the internet that showed me how to take a microwave transformer out of an old microwave and make my own wood fracking machine with battery cables and everything the story goes on every time she worked with the makeshift machine there was someone nearby her husband or father-in-law in case something went wrong but november the second her husband left to get the couple something to eat for lunch he hadn't been gone more than two minutes when tragedy struck i'm short cohen said i'm five foot warned it was cold outside so i decided to go out there in my pajama pants this often gets done outdoors because it's very smoky it's not something you want to do in your kitchen or anything like that so people tend to do it in garages and sheds the machine which sat on the floor was turned off when she picked up the cables but when she went to take a step she tripped in her pajama pants and accidentally turned on the electricity course through her hands keeping her body upright and locked in a standing position she was unable to let go of the cables or move away from the machine the story continues that when she woke up lying on the floor and some distance from where she'd been standing uh she ended up getting taken into hospital and uh well these two fingers are missing the thumb is mutilated and her rest for hand is covered in burns in this very restricted movement it's a horrible story i shall link to it so you can see the image if you wish such things so let's talk about this microwave oven transformer and one of the worst things of all about doing this there are so many bad things about this so the windings of the microwave oven transformer oh incidentally when you go into it also note that when you're faffing around in your microwave oven there's a big high voltage capacitor inside as well and even it's turned off this can order charge for a length of time they usually have discharge resistors never ever trust a discharge resistor always get a properly insulated screwdriver and short the terminals on one of these and never ever work in a microwave oven with the power turned on they are possibly internally the most dangerous appliance to work on in your home fine when the case is on just don't go inside so the transformer itself has a primary so in the uk that would be 240 volt but in america it'd be 120 volts so let's say 120 to 240 volts and the primary is this visible winding here it's got two speed terminals at this end and you can see the two soda connections for that incidentally other things this transformer can get used for that are safer quite often you'll see people making their own spot welders out to them what they do is they take a hacksaw and they cut off the dangerous high voltage secondary winding uh knock all the remains of it out and then they put a few loops of heavy wire around and as long as these are well insulated you then have a transformer that puts out very low voltage at high current nothing wrong with that this is purely about the high voltage aspect so there's the uh primary and we have the high voltage secondary which uh is galvanically separated this is important so with the high voltage secondary which is reference to ground let me show you that on the transformer it's this top winding that is covered in it's a large cluster of windings and there's one end of the winding and it's tapped onto the case so that is grounded onto the metal case and the other one is this spade terminal coming out the side that is the dangerous terminal you also have this winding here which is just a few turns it's a low voltage winding it's used for the heater in the magnetron itself i should draw that in anyway it's not of relevance here it doesn't get connected so but this is a bit with the high voltage between it scary high voltage now things worthy of no if you think that when you get an electric shock and keep in mind if you're actually say for instance you're standing working doing your your wood art and stuff like that and you're standing the ground at the voltages we're talking about here uh especially if you're out in a garage on a concrete floor or out in the garden uh it's going to you're going to be well earth it doesn't matter that you've got insulated shoes on because uh this is this is a high voltage coming out of this uh normal household shocks are nothing compared to this but anyway you've got your uh work me off here and somehow you come in contact with it what's going to happen then is there's going to be a high current flow from this because if you're dealing say for instance you're dealing with 120 volts if you accidentally came in contact with it you might get a tingle partly because uh dry skin has a very high resistance in the surface it's not something you should depend on but it has a layer of dead skin cells in the front that provide at least a barrier against that and it's good typically for working up to about 50 volts beyond that it does pose a hazard of insulation breakdown with the voltages coming out of this there's no chance it's just going to literally punch a hole right through your skin and into your flesh and you're very conductive inside it will then go through your body including through your heart area and it will find a path to ground and even insulated shoes may not actually prevent you getting a significant shock but here's the worst bit you might have a gfci gfci oh i almost misspelled that or an rcd as we call it in uk or is it current device gfci ground fault circuit and dropped or makes more sense but that's how how our acronyms are but these things measure the current flowing out and coming back in and if they see something as leaked say for instance uh an insulation broke down here and it leaked down to earth somewhere then they'll see that some of it's not coming back and it'll trip the circuit breaker with a galvanically separated transformer all it sees is the current flowing in the primary so if you're in the secretary which is reference to earth and the current is zapping through your body to ground and finding its way back that's a closed loop in there it is not seeing it in that side it thinks it's a normal load and the circuit protection will not trip uh it's not a great thing there are unfortunately horrible statistics because so many have now died from this project uh when people come in contact with the equipment and pass current and this is just this complacency thing you just got over familiar with it or an unexpected scenario occurs the probability of death from that electrical contact is a staggering 70 and of those 30 that survive uh they will have scars burns or just other physical problems caused by basically uh having been through the equivalent of the electric chair for a brief period of time um or the equivalent of touching an overhead line that's how serious it is so what about safety here then well what i mentioned last video was a device called a dead man's handle or a dead man switch it's a box that is wide enough that you can't just bridge the buttons because it's got a button on their side and it's a moment traction button and the wired in series with the primary of the transformer and the only way to energize that transformer is to pick up the box and with both hands and press both the buttons while the energization is needed as soon as you drop that box if something happens or as soon as you decide to go and re adjust something as soon as you take your finger off one of the buttons uh it will kill the power of the transformer and render it safe um it's worth also having a little indicator light i'll draw a traditional little indicator light there across the primary transformer just to say well it's active actually times two because uh one of the lamps may fail play safe i'm not going to say don't do it because that would be like weaving a red flag in front of a build that would make you want to do it all i'm going to do is say there are safer ways of doing it the wood art that i burnt i did it with much lower current i used a microwave and not a microwave oven transfer i used a neon sign transformer and it's much slower it's much more fickle it takes a bit of experimentation it's not as brute force as these things the microwave oven transformers but it is that much safer because well um i know plenty of people had electric shocks from neon sign transformers but the current is inherently limited by the transformer to about 30 milliamps or so and it just tends to be a violent experience but much less fatal than uh electric chair type devices uh so the other option is you can get high frequency supplies let me grab one i've never really tested this but you get high frequency electronic sound transformers that uh the high frequency itself i mean this is not guaranteed there's always a risk for shock there's always risk of burns but things like the high frequency supplies can also enhance the safety a bit by virtue of the skin effect or the fact that your muscles don't respond to the much higher frequency these put out though i have to say from previous experience that uh you may not feel the high frequency but you sure as heck feel the mains ripple yes i shouldn't have put myself in series with a neon driver and the tube just to see if it gave me a shock or not it did well there you go science so there we have it i was going to end on a really just sarcastic comment there but i'm not going to or should i because there are going to be narcissistic experts that go down into the comments and tell me i'm an and and that you know they've been doing it this way forever and they just plug it in when they want to do it and just hold the leads in their hand and they've survived and to those people i say try not to scream too loudly while you're dying oh of course you won't be able to due to respiratory paralysis lol

Channel: bigclivedotcom

Views: 4,315,893

Keywords:

Id: FBeSKL9zVro

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/SquidCap0]

The comments are a goldmine.. it is just one comment after another "i do this for living and i won't go anywhere near microwave transformers"..

[u/ragsofx]

Any time I see someone doing some dodgy home project with mains I worry for them ands it's even worse when they start stepping up the voltage. I used to repair my own CRT screens in my arcade cabinets and I'm really surprised it never ended up going bad.