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mrussell

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  • 3D printer
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  • Country
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    Engineering

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  1. Yea, I find it hard to believe someone blew up a house hair spray. More likely, they were cooking meth using the butyl-alcohol from a can of hair spray. Meth cookers also use ether.(Which is sold in 12oz cans as starting fluid to start your old carburetor truck on a cold morning.) Its highly volatile, and KNOWN for causing explosions. (Which is why you would avoid it in a lab if you could, but meth-heads cant be choosy and have to take whatever home depot has) I had an organic chem professor that was really scared of ether. He told a story of one of HIS professors that had half of a right hand, basically just the middle and ring fingers. He said that the guy was holding a tiny 25mL (thats about an inch tall) beaker of diethyl-ether and it just "went off" (which is known to happen if its an old bottle and has formed explosive peroxides. ).Its also heavier than air so if you sit a beaker of it on a counter the fumes will collect in sinks, low spots and at counter level, and follow the counter until they come to an ignition source like a Bunsen burner. (no flames ANYWHERE in a lab using those kinds of solvents) I bet tweaker dude was spazzing out, dreaming about the awesome fix he was going to get when his batch was finished, and rushing through the synthesis, probably following line by line a dubious recipe he got of the internet, without bothering to read through the instructions and plan out each step first. (Meth heads are not known for patience, or planning for forethought) Then he likely did something like, take two cans of ether and big coffee cup out the freezer, empty them into them into the cup and sit it on the counter. Ether followed the counter to the pilot light of the stove or followed the floor to the water heater, (or maybe he just sad the lit cigarette hanging from his mouth on the edge of the counter) and BOOM. Once again Darwin is proven correct. On the actual subject of this thread, I dont think there is a problem heating hair spray. If small amounts of heated hair spray degraded to cause a problem, it would not be usable. Women use a blow drier on a head of hair with hair spray all the time. While its normally not heated to the temperatures of the filament it might readily be heated to the temperature of the heated bed by a hair drier. But if it was toxic,it would be a real problem in hair salons. I used to work in a industrial hygiene lab testing chemical samples from workplaces. (An inspector would go to the work-site put a monitoring device on someone that would collect a sample of the chemicals that were in the air to sample what the employee was breathing then send it to the lab to be analyzed) I dont recall ever having anything related to degradation products of hair sprays come in. The butyl-alchohol could be an issue if you upended the can and inhaled it, or if you discharged the whole can in a closed bathroom. Your only using a bit though, probably less than you use for hair so its not a big deal. (dont use "Aircraft paint remover" in a closed bathroom with no fan to strip the paint off an old intake manifold. Dont ask me how I know, just dont do it) On the subject of the backup heated bed has to preheat when taken off the machine taking time, one thought is to find out what power the heated bed needs and what voltage it runs at. There are temperature controllers on eBay for something like 5 bucks. Get the proper connector and make a harness to connect to the heated bed. Then as soon as the part comes out of the freezer, put the heated bed on the temp controller to bring it up to temperature. The talk of putting it in the freezer actually makes me reconsider the first idea I had for making my own heated bed. I was thinking of putting a big (or several big) thermometric coolers on the bottom of the bed, sandwiched between two sheets of 1/4" aluminum. (my bed area is small,for larger you might want some angle stock to reinforce or a 3/8 sheet. The coolers would be able to drive a temperature gradient between those two pieces quite rapidly. The only issue would be overheating, becuase each time you pump heat from one side to the other, you also add a bunch of extra heat, so you would put a fan on the bottom plate to get rid of the extra, as well as keeping it from going so far below ambient that you start getting condensation. To release the part, just take it down near freezing and it should pop free. Then reverse the voltage and the plate should get hot fast.
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